Huffington Post - Dan Froomkin is Washington Bureau Chief of the Huffington Post, and also Deputy Editor of NiemanWatchdog.org, where this post first appeared.
Excerpts and Commentary
A series of articles appeared on the Nieman Watchdog Web site that collectively present the idea that this current crisis was not cyclical in nature, but instead is an expression of structural problems. From their conclusions, there are seven things that everyone, especially policy makers, should know. Most of all, the myth that Wall Street used to justify their outrageous compensation packages can be debunked once and for all. The investment banks and program traders do not create wealth through innovation; they merely move numbers around, stealing from slower and more gullible investors. Like playing musical chairs in kindergarten, those holding the worthless pieces of paper when the music stops, are like those proverbial Norwegian pension funds who have no other recourse but to sue the big banks for their questionable practices. As for everyone else, the fall out is yet to come.
No. 1: The middle class may never be the same again. For most members of the middle class, their sense of financial well-being was largely based on the size of their 401(k)s and their equity as homeowners. While 401(k)s have somewhat bounced back, about one in four homeowners now actually have negative equity -- are "underwater". For long stretches of time, the growth in the nation's GDP has gone almost entirely to the top 1% or less of the population. That has resulted in an dramatic shift in wealth away from the middle class, made the economy more vulnerable to disaster and made the toll of such a disaster more catastrophic to all but the wealthiest Americans. ... Elizabeth Warren, an emerging hero among progressives in her role as chair of the congressional bailout oversight panel, writes:
America today has plenty of rich and super-rich. But it has far more families who did all the right things, but who still have no real security. Going to college and finding a good job no longer guarantee economic safety. Paying for a child's education and setting aside enough for a decent retirement have become distant dreams. Tens of millions of once-secure middle class families now live paycheck to paycheck, watching as their debts pile up and worrying about whether a pink slip or a bad diagnosis will send them hurtling over an economic cliff.
She concludes: "America without a strong middle class? Unthinkable, but the once-solid foundation is shaking."
Without the strong backbone of the middle class, American life will be dominated by the oligarchy of the rich and powerful, the multinational lobbyists, the wealthy Republicans who cared more about their own freedom than the well-being of fellow Americans.
No. 2: The recovery could take a really long time. And the recovery, such as it is, has been largely fueled by government money -- not just the stimulus, but also the bailouts, targeted programs such as the home buyers tax credit and "cash for clunkers," and emergency spending on such things as extended unemployment insurance. What happens, however, when those stop? And none are designed to go on forever.
Washington Post financial columnist Steven Pearlstein recently put it this way:
My best guess is that the current upswings in economic output, confidence and financial asset prices are largely a reflection of the extraordinary fiscal and monetary juice provided by Treasury and the Federal Reserve, along with the natural rebound that occurs after a collapse in consumer and business spending like that which occurred in the first half of 2009. The surprising strength of the bounce-back testifies to the wisdom of the underlying strengths of the U.S. economy and the success of the policies, but is likely to peter out as the stimulus begins to wear off and the inventory correction is completed.
It is already clear that the first round of stimulus has been insufficient, and also inefficiently implemented, with a result of billions still unassigned, sitting idly in the Treasury. By contrast, the socialist Chinese stimulus programs have been lightning fast in response and implementation, and efficient in the distribution of funds to the middle class consumers. Indeed, China is now reining in credit to prevent the economy from overheating. At 10% growth last year, China overtook Japan as the world's second largest economy. Although the American economy is still by far the world's largest, at three times the size of next national economy, if the current state of affairs continue, China will be similar in size as the American economy within a couple decades. Even now, regional economies such as The European Union and the up and coming East Asian Community will take on increasingly leadership roles in the world. America cannot allow complacency to lose its future place in the world.
No. 3: The recovery could only be temporary In an interview with Fox News back in November, Obama himself raised the possibility that the economy could once again into a tailspin:
I think it is important though to recognize that if we keep on adding to the debt, even in the midst of this recovery, that at some point, people could lose confidence in the US economy in a way that could actually lead to a double-dip recession.
Clinton-era Labor Secretary Robert Reich recently speculated a 20 percent chance of a stalled recovery.
The commercial real estate market craters, carrying with it hundreds of regional banks and exposing how much junk is still on the books of major Wall Street banks. This triggers a long-awaited "correction" in the Dow and pushes the nation into another recession. Job losses rise.
If the trillion of dollars pumped into Wall Street through TARP and by means of low or no interest loans from the Feds were used to buy and stop short all the millions of foreclosures that occurred in the past year, American home equity would not be nearly as badly off as they are now, with possibly a significant percentage of them above water, instead of being under water. It is indisputable that the Wall-Street bail out programs have been woefully inadequate and inefficient in terms of saving the American economy, in terms of preventing a future economic meltdown. Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase was quite correct when he answered the Congressional inquest into the financial crisis. As far as he and his banker pals are concerned, another once-in-a-century financial meltdown may occur again. It is unavoidable. They have no idea how to prevent another one. It is up to Congress and the American people to prevent it.
No. 4: Then what? This time, we don't have the tools to get out of a recession The recognized way of dealing with a recession is to lower interest rates in order to stimulate the economy. But the Federal Reserve can't lower the rate to below zero, so that's out.
The government can pour vast amounts of money into the economy, either through a stimulus or a massive bailout -- or, as the case may be, both.
But next time around, that money might not be there. Not only could the political will be lacking, but there is an upper limit to just how much money the country can borrow and spend at one time without it doing more harm than good.
The problem is worst than described above. The Feds have already created negative interest rates by the sleigh of hand through no interest loans to the big banks. It is why Wall Street and the investment banks rebounded so quickly, with a flush of liquidity directly from the American people's coffers. Unfortunately, instead of directing the liquidity to Main Street, Wall Street decides to drown themselves in self-congratulatory bonuses. The Feds, in fact, has been compromised by the bankers and little has been done to stimulate the economy using Feds funds.
No. 5: The ‘very serious' people in Washington are still obsessed about the deficit New York Times columnist Paul Krugman noted recently, "the calls we're already hearing for an end to stimulus, for reversing the steps the government and the Federal Reserve took to prop up the economy, will grow even louder." He adds:
But if those calls are heeded, we'll be repeating the great mistake of 1937, when the Fed and the Roosevelt administration decided that the Great Depression was over, that it was time for the economy to throw away its crutches. Spending was cut back, monetary policy was tightened -- and the economy promptly plunged back into the depths.
When the firm is still struggling to meet operating margins, still striving to recover revenue lost to economic downturn and customers going through hard times, is it time to cut back on credits and cut back on staff and cut back on structural investments? The medicine is worse than the disease and will likely kill the patient. Slash and burn deficit reduction may balance the books, but at what cost? Will the America that survive be the society that is still called America? President Obama just announced a freeze on programs. When more stimulus is required, this freeze is no different from cutting cost. Now is not the time to count beans when the house is falling down.
President Obama stated in his first State of the Union Address to the Congress that the freeze will only take effect beginning in 2011. Let's hope the economy recovers quickly and job creation produced sufficient results to tolerate the freeze. A weakened patient is susceptible to even a mild shock.
No. 6: Whatever is making the stock market go up could go away The giddiness over the recovering stock market makes it easy to overlook some key questions about its rise. But what exactly has sent the Dow up almost 70 percent since March? Could it be another bubble? And could it burst?
Was it a function of the extraordinary liquidity pumped into the system, first through the bailouts and now through nearly zero-interest loans to the banks? Was it foreign investors attracted by weak dollar and low interest rates? Where's all the money coming from?
No one seems to know. (Does anyone really care?) But whatever it was could presumably come to an end, devastating the market and the economy.
The current "irrational exuberance" (as past Feds Chair Alan Greenspan described a previous bubble) clearly demonstrates the disconnection between Wall Street and Main Street. To put it in less poetic and more scientific terms, the stock market evaluation of company capital and earning potential has nothing or little to do with the fundamentals of the economy. Indeed, it is this disconnection which propelled the latest fad in program trading, the Quants. As seen in the book review in the Wall Street Journal, Scott Patterson's new book, "The Quants." These self-proclaimed geniuses dress up program-trading using esoteric mathematics and algorithms and called it innovative investing. Program trading already caused crashes in 1991, and before that in 1987. Without regulation and supervision, the bankers who make hundreds of millions each year decide to allow this risky practice, and reap billions in profits, instead of safeguarding the hundreds of billions of people's savings, entrusted to them because they say they know what they are doing, because they say they are the experts. The past year has shown the transparency of the Emperor's New Clothes. Let's call Wall Street naked selfish greed for what it is.
Wall Street JournalIn his new book, "The Quants," Wall Street Journal reporter Scott Patterson suggests how a new breed of mathematicians and computer scientists took over much of the financial system and inflicted the damage that led to the financial meltdown.
No. 7: The hugely irresponsible financial sector remains unchastened Back in March, Obama described modern Wall Street as a "house of cards" and a "Ponzi scheme" in which "a relatively few do spectacularly well while the middle class loses ground."
In his major speech on the economy in April, the president proclaimed that "we cannot go back to the bubble-and-bust economy that led us to this point." He continued:
It is simply not sustainable to have a 21st-century financial system that is governed by 20th-century rules and regulations that allowed the recklessness of a few to threaten the entire economy. It is not sustainable to have an economy where in one year, 40 percent of our corporate profits came from a financial sector that was based on inflated home prices, maxed-out credit cards, over-leveraged banks and overvalued assets. It's not sustainable to have an economy where the incomes of the top 1 percent has skyrocketed while the typical working household has seen their incomes decline by nearly $2,000. That's just not a sustainable model for long-term prosperity.
Economist Simon Johnson (the subject of one of Hanrahan's articles) recently said on CNBC:
The conventional wisdom is you can't have back-to-back major financial crises. I think we're going to push that, we're going to have a look and see whether that's true. And the next 12 months could really be exciting. People could be very positive, but we are setting ourselves up for an enormous catastrophe.
Indeed. By Obama's biblical analogy, our economy is still very much built on sand --and the next big storm might not be very far away at all.
The worst is yet to come, if the banks are not regulated, and the Obama Administration does not do more to stimulate the economy, and homeowners continue to be left out on their own to be foreclosed by banks that are too big to care. When the Second Great Depression comes, America will lose its leadership position in the world to China, and will remain a has-been superpower for decades to come.
Now it's the time to take action, chasten the financial barons, whip Congress into passing needed legislation, and move Main Street back to the top of the agenda.
After retiring from Microsoft, and devoting his energy to steering the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, trusted with Warren Buffet's fortune as well, Bill Gates applied his understanding of technology to the problem of human impact on global climate change.
In his blog on Huffington Post, Bill Gates made clear the scope and magnitude of what confronts humanity in the next few decades, in this century, and in the coming millenium.
While most people focussed on the question of reducing green house gases using conventional means, Bill Gates observed that conventional means simply cannot solve the problem due to the magnitude of what's ahead.
Given the nature of consumption, of traditional industrial society, conventional technologies cannot reduce green house gases production without reducing a society's standard of living. It is the reason he stated for the importance of innovation. New processes must be invented to produce the same standard of living without producing green house gases.
Without innovation, the world can, at best, delay the inevitable, by reducing, recycling, and reusing. No matter how efficient we are at using conventional technologies, they will always produce green house gases that impact global climate change. Given the population of the world today, any emission, when mulitiplied by the increasingly developed world with an increasing population, will impact on global climate. Human impact on the world is unavoidable. We can only choose HOW we impact on the world.
Yes, we need to improve efficiency, but more importantly, we need innovation that will change existing processes. Without innovation, we cannot collectively escape the inevitable rise in global temperatures, in sea levels, and the eventual exhausted resources leaving future generations poorer, living below the standard of living that we enjoy today, in the developed world.
Excerpts
People often present two timeframes that we should have as goals for CO2 reduction - 30% (off of some baseline) by 2025 and 80% by 2050.
I believe the key one to achieve is 80% by 2050.
But we tend to focus on the first one since it is much more concrete.
We don't distinguish properly between things that put you on a path to making the 80% goal by 2050 and things that don't really help.
To make the 80% goal by 2050 we are going to have to reduce emissions from transportation and electrical production in participating countries down to zero.
You will still have emissions from other activities including domestic animals, making fertilizer, and decay processes.
There will still be countries that are too poor to participate.
If the goal is to get the transportation and electrical sectors down to zero emissions you clearly need innovation that leads to entirely new approaches to generating power.
Should society spend a lot of time trying to insulate houses and telling people to turn off lights or should it spend time on accelerating innovation?
If addressing climate change only requires us to get to the 2025 goal, then efficiency would be the key thing.
But you can never insulate your way to anything close to zero no matter what advocates of resource efficiency say. You can never reduce consumerism to anything close to zero.
Because 2025 is too soon for innovation to be completed and widely deployed, behavior change still matters.
Still, the amount of CO2 avoided by these kinds of modest reduction efforts will not be the key to what happens with climate change in the long run.
In fact it is doubtful that any such efforts in the rich countries will even offset the increase coming from richer lifestyles in places like China, India, Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, etc.
Innovation in transportation and electricity will be the key factor.
One of the reasons I bring this up is that I hear a lot of climate change experts focus totally on 2025 or talk about how great it is that there is so much low hanging fruit that will make a difference.
This mostly focuses on saving a little bit of energy, which by itself is simply not enough. The need to get to zero emissions in key sectors almost never gets mentioned. The danger is people will think they just need to do a little bit and things will be fine.
If CO2 reduction is important, we need to make it clear to people what really matters - getting to zero.
With that kind of clarity, people will understand the need to get to zero and begin to grasp the scope and scale of innovation that is needed.
However all the talk about renewable portfolios, efficiency, and cap and trade tends to obscure the specific things that need to be done.
To achieve the kinds of innovations that will be required I think a distributed system of R&D with economic rewards for innovators and strong government encouragement is the key. There just isn't enough work going on today to get us to where we need to go.
My point is not to denigrate efficiency. Slowing the growth of CO2 ppm is of course a good thing. And there are of course lots of cheap, and in many cases self-funding efficiency gains to be made.
We should at the least fix market barriers and dysfunctions that prevent these gains from being realized. That's just being smart.
But it's not enough to slow the growth of CO2 given the strength of demand driven by the poor who need to get access energy. And, we have to actually stop it at some point.
No amount of insulation will get us there, only innovating our way to essentially 0-carbon energy technology will do it. If we focus on just efficiency to the exclusion of innovation, or imagine that we can worry about efficiency first and worry about energy innovation later, we won't get there.
The world is distracted from what counts on this issue in a big way.
Twenty five years ago in 1985, Garry Kasporov proved to the world that human intellect still triumphed over computing prowess by defeating simultaneously a diverse collection of computer programs running on a number of different hardware platform. Eleven years later, the result was not as definitive, and it was a one-on-one match against a supercomputer specially designed to play chess. By 1997, twelve years after Kasporov triumph over all comers in Hamburg, a year after narrowly defeating IBM's Deep Blue, Kasporov was defeated by the new and improved model.
In his review of the book by Diego Rasskin-Gutman, "Chess Metaphors: Artificial Intelligence and the Human Mind", Kasporov analysed the relationship between man and machine with the penetrating insight expected from a Grandmaster who had an intimate encounter with the most powerful chess playing intelligence on silicon.
Citing his experience with "Advanced Chess" in a match against Veselin Topalov in 1998 in León, Spain, where both players had a PC with the chess software of his choice assisting during the game, Kasparov was surprised by the result, an even 3-3 draw when the results between the two unassisted players were previously 4-0. The computers gave Topalov the assistance needed to nullify Kasparov's superior tactical calculating skills.
More poignantly, an online tournament at PlayChess.com where participants played in teams consisting of humans and computer programs illustrated clearly the importance of the man-machine relationship. A team of two amateur chess players with three computers beat all other teams, even grandmasters teamed with supercomputers. It is not the techonology, but how it is used.
It's never man against machine. It's always been man against man, and once again, the man with the better use of the better machine will beat ANY man who cannot use machine as effectively, talented or not. Technology is the great equalizer of our time, not only of muscle and brute force, but also of intelligence and creativity.
Russia is blessed to have Kasparov. The human race is blessed to have Kasparov during the time when the man-machine relationship takes on new significance. Wall Street was almost wrecked by programmed trading and the quantitative gang that placed more faith on the computers and their numbers than on human intuition and understanding. Already technology has caused great changes in global climate, species extinction, and pollution in the air, in the ocean, and in our very bodies. How humans relate to technology in the next few decades will be the defining moment of our generation in history.
Excerpts
In 1985, in Hamburg, I played against thirty-two different chess computers at the same time in what is known as a simultaneous exhibition. I walked from one machine to the next, making my moves over a period of more than five hours. The four leading chess computer manufacturers had sent their top models, including eight named after me from the electronics firm Saitek.
It illustrates the state of computer chess at the time that it didn't come as much of a surprise when I achieved a perfect 32-0 score, winning every game, although there was an uncomfortable moment. At one point I realized that I was drifting into trouble in a game against one of the "Kasparov" brand models. If this machine scored a win or even a draw, people would be quick to say that I had thrown the game to get PR for the company, so I had to intensify my efforts. Eventually I found a way to trick the machine with a sacrifice it should have refused. From the human perspective, or at least from my perspective, those were the good old days of man vs. machine chess.
Eleven years later I narrowly defeated the supercomputer Deep Blue in a match. Then, in 1997, IBM redoubled its efforts--and doubled Deep Blue's processing power--and I lost the rematch in an event that made headlines around the world. The result was met with astonishment and grief by those who took it as a symbol of mankind's submission before the almighty computer. ("The Brain's Last Stand" read the Newsweek headline.) Others shrugged their shoulders, surprised that humans could still compete at all against the enormous calculating power that, by 1997, sat on just about every desk in the first world.
It was the specialists--the chess players and the programmers and the artificial intelligence enthusiasts--who had a more nuanced appreciation of the result. Grandmasters had already begun to see the implications of the existence of machines that could play--if only, at this point, in a select few types of board configurations--with godlike perfection. The computer chess people were delighted with the conquest of one of the earliest and holiest grails of computer science, in many cases matching the mainstream media's hyperbole. The 2003 book "Deep Blue" by Monty Newborn was blurbed as follows: "a rare, pivotal watershed beyond all other triumphs: Orville Wright's first flight, NASA's landing on the moon...."
The AI crowd, too, was pleased with the result and the attention, but dismayed by the fact that Deep Blue was hardly what their predecessors had imagined decades earlier when they dreamed of creating a machine to defeat the world chess champion. Instead of a computer that thought and played chess like a human, with human creativity and intuition, they got one that played like a machine, systematically evaluating 200 million possible moves on the chess board per second and winning with brute number-crunching force. As Igor Aleksander, a British AI and neural networks pioneer, explained in his 2000 book, "How to Build a Mind":
By the mid-1990s the number of people with some experience of using computers was many orders of magnitude greater than in the 1960s. In the Kasparov defeat they recognized that here was a great triumph for programmers, but not one that may compete with the human intelligence that helps us to lead our lives.
It was an impressive achievement, of course, and a human achievement by the members of the IBM team, but Deep Blue was only intelligent the way your programmable alarm clock is intelligent. Not that losing to a $10 million alarm clock made me feel any better.
My hopes for a return match with Deep Blue were dashed, unfortunately. IBM had the publicity it wanted and quickly shut down the project. Other chess computing projects around the world also lost their sponsorship. Though I would have liked my chances in a rematch in 1998 if I were better prepared, it was clear then that computer superiority over humans in chess had always been just a matter of time. Today, for $50 you can buy a home PC program that will crush most grandmasters. In 2003, I played serious matches against two of these programs running on commercially available multiprocessor servers--and, of course, I was playing just one game at a time--and in both cases the score ended in a tie with a win apiece and several draws.
Inevitable or not, no one understood all the ramifications of having a super-grandmaster on your laptop, especially what this would mean for professional chess. There were many doomsday scenarios about people losing interest in chess with the rise of the machines, especially after my loss to Deep Blue. Some replied to this with variations on the theme of how we still hold footraces despite cars and bicycles going much faster, a spurious analogy since cars do not help humans run faster while chess computers undoubtedly have an effect on the quality of human chess.
Another group postulated that the game would be solved, i.e., a mathematically conclusive way for a computer to win from the start would be found. (Or perhaps it would prove that a game of chess played in the best possible way always ends in a draw.) Perhaps a real version of HAL 9000 would simply announce move 1.e4, with checkmate in, say, 38,484 moves. These gloomy predictions have not come true, nor will they ever come to pass. Chess is far too complex to be definitively solved with any technology we can conceive of today. However, our looked-down-upon cousin, checkers, or draughts, suffered this fate quite recently thanks to the work of Jonathan Schaeffer at the University of Alberta and his unbeatable program Chinook.
The number of legal chess positions is 1040, the number of different possible games, 10120. Authors have attempted various ways to convey this immensity, usually based on one of the few fields to regularly employ such exponents, astronomy. In his book "Chess Metaphors", Diego Rasskin-Gutman points out that a player looking eight moves ahead is already presented with as many possible games as there are stars in the galaxy. Another staple, a variation of which is also used by Rasskin-Gutman, is to say there are more possible chess games than the number of atoms in the universe. All of these comparisons impress upon the casual observer why brute-force computer calculation can't solve this ancient board game. They are also handy, and I am not above doing this myself, for impressing people with how complicated chess is, if only in a largely irrelevant mathematical way.
This astronomical scale is not at all irrelevant to chess programmers. They've known from the beginning that solving the game--creating a provably unbeatable program--was not possible with the computer power available, and that effective shortcuts would have to be found. In fact, the first chess program put into practice was designed by legendary British mathematician Alan Turing in 1952, and he didn't even have a computer! He processed the algorithm on pieces of paper and this "paper machine" played a competent game.
Rasskin-Gutman covers this well-traveled territory in a book that achieves its goal of being an overview of overviews, if little else. The history of the study of brain function is covered in the first chapter, tempting the reader to skip ahead. You might recall axons and dendrites from high school biology class. We also learn about cholinergic and aminergic systems and many other things that are not found by my computer's artificially intelligent English spell-checking system--or referenced again by the author. Then it's on to similarly concise, if inconclusive, surveys of artificial intelligence, chess computers, and how humans play chess.
There have been many unintended consequences, both positive and negative, of the rapid proliferation of powerful chess software. Kids love computers and take to them naturally, so it's no surprise that the same is true of the combination of chess and computers. With the introduction of super-powerful software it became possible for a youngster to have a top-level opponent at home instead of needing a professional trainer from an early age. Countries with little by way of chess tradition and few available coaches can now produce prodigies. I am in fact coaching one of them this year, nineteen-year-old Magnus Carlsen, from Norway, where relatively little chess is played.
The heavy use of computer analysis has pushed the game itself in new directions. The machine doesn't care about style or patterns or hundreds of years of established theory. It counts up the values of the chess pieces, analyzes a few billion moves, and counts them up again. (A computer translates each piece and each positional factor into a value in order to reduce the game to numbers it can crunch.) It is entirely free of prejudice and doctrine and this has contributed to the development of players who are almost as free of dogma as the machines with which they train. Increasingly, a move isn't good or bad because it looks that way or because it hasn't been done that way before. It's simply good if it works and bad if it doesn't. Although we still require a strong measure of intuition and logic to play well, humans today are starting to play more like computers.
The availability of millions of games at one's fingertips in a database is also making the game's best players younger and younger. Absorbing the thousands of essential patterns and opening moves used to take many years, a process indicative of Malcolm Gladwell's "10,000 hours to become an expert" theory as expounded in his recent book "Outliers". (Gladwell's earlier book, "Blink", rehashed, if more creatively, much of the cognitive psychology material that is re-rehashed in "Chess Metaphors".) Today's teens, and increasingly pre-teens, can accelerate this process by plugging into a digitized archive of chess information and making full use of the superiority of the young mind to retain it all. In the pre-computer era, teenage grandmasters were rarities and almost always destined to play for the world championship. Bobby Fischer's 1958 record of attaining the grandmaster title at fifteen was broken only in 1991. It has been broken twenty times since then, with the current record holder, Ukrainian Sergey Karjakin, having claimed the highest title at the nearly absurd age of twelve in 2002. Now twenty, Karjakin is among the world's best, but like most of his modern wunderkind peers he's no Fischer, who stood out head and shoulders above his peers--and soon enough above the rest of the chess world as well.
Excelling at chess has long been considered a symbol of more general intelligence. That is an incorrect assumption in my view, as pleasant as it might be. But for the purposes of argument and investigation, chess is, in Russkin-Gutman's words, "an unparalleled laboratory, since both the learning process and the degree of ability obtained can be objectified and quantified, providing an excellent comparative framework on which to use rigorous analytical techniques."
Here I agree wholeheartedly, if for different reasons. I am much more interested in using the chess laboratory to illuminate the workings of the human mind, not the artificial mind. As I put it in my 2007 book, "How Life Imitates Chess", "Chess is a unique cognitive nexus, a place where art and science come together in the human mind and are then refined and improved by experience." Coincidentally the section in which that phrase appears is titled "More than a metaphor." It makes the case for using the decision-making process of chess as a model for understanding and improving our decision-making everywhere else.
This is not to say that I am not interested in the quest for intelligent machines. My many exhibitions with chess computers stemmed from a desire to participate in this grand experiment. It was my luck (perhaps my bad luck) to be the world chess champion during the critical years in which computers challenged, then surpassed, human chess players. Before 1994 and after 2004 these duels held little interest. The computers quickly went from too weak to too strong. But for a span of ten years these contests were fascinating clashes between the computational power of the machines (and, lest we forget, the human wisdom of their programmers) and the intuition and knowledge of the grandmaster.
In what Rasskin-Gutman explains as Moravec's Paradox, in chess, as in so many things, what computers are good at is where humans are weak, and vice versa. This gave me an idea for an experiment. What if instead of human versus machine we played as partners? My brainchild saw the light of day in a match in 1998 in León, Spain, and we called it "Advanced Chess." Each player had a PC at hand running the chess software of his choice during the game. The idea was to create the highest level of chess ever played, a synthesis of the best of man and machine.
Although I had prepared for the unusual format, my match against the Bulgarian Veselin Topalov, until recently the world's number one ranked player, was full of strange sensations. Having a computer program available during play was as disturbing as it was exciting. And being able to access a database of a few million games meant that we didn't have to strain our memories nearly as much in the opening, whose possibilities have been thoroughly catalogued over the years. But since we both had equal access to the same database, the advantage still came down to creating a new idea at some point.
Having a computer partner also meant never having to worry about making a tactical blunder. The computer could project the consequences of each move we considered, pointing out possible outcomes and countermoves we might otherwise have missed. With that taken care of for us, we could concentrate on strategic planning instead of spending so much time on calculations. Human creativity was even more paramount under these conditions. Despite access to the "best of both worlds," my games with Topalov were far from perfect. We were playing on the clock and had little time to consult with our silicon assistants. Still, the results were notable. A month earlier I had defeated the Bulgarian in a match of "regular" rapid chess 4-0. Our advanced chess match ended in a 3-3 draw. My advantage in calculating tactics had been nullified by the machine.
This experiment goes unmentioned by Russkin-Gutman, a major omission since it relates so closely to his subject. Even more notable was how the advanced chess experiment continued. In 2005, the online chess-playing site Playchess.com hosted what it called a "freestyle" chess tournament in which anyone could compete in teams with other players or computers. Normally, "anti-cheating" algorithms are employed by online sites to prevent, or at least discourage, players from cheating with computer assistance. (I wonder if these detection algorithms, which employ diagnostic analysis of moves and calculate probabilities, are any less "intelligent" than the playing programs they detect.)
Lured by the substantial prize money, several groups of strong grandmasters working with several computers at the same time entered the competition. At first, the results seemed predictable. The teams of human plus machine dominated even the strongest computers. The chess machine Hydra, which is a chess-specific supercomputer like Deep Blue, was no match for a strong human player using a relatively weak laptop. Human strategic guidance combined with the tactical acuity of a computer was overwhelming.
The surprise came at the conclusion of the event. The winner was revealed to be not a grandmaster with a state-of-the-art PC but a pair of amateur American chess players using three computers at the same time. Their skill at manipulating and "coaching" their computers to look very deeply into positions effectively counteracted the superior chess understanding of their grandmaster opponents and the greater computational power of other participants. Weak human + machine + better process was superior to a strong computer alone and, more remarkably, superior to a strong human + machine + inferior process.
The "freestyle" result, though startling, fits with my belief that talent is a misused term and a misunderstood concept. The moment I became the youngest world chess champion in history at the age of twenty-two in 1985, I began receiving endless questions about the secret of my success and the nature of my talent. Instead of asking about Sicilian Defenses, journalists wanted to know about my diet, my personal life, how many moves ahead I saw, and how many games I held in my memory.
I soon realized that my answers were disappointing. I didn't eat anything special. I worked hard because my mother had taught me to. My memory was good, but hardly photographic. As for how many moves ahead a grandmaster sees, Russkin-Gutman makes much of the answer attributed to the great Cuban world champion José Raúl Capablanca, among others: "Just one, the best one." This answer is as good or bad as any other, a pithy way of disposing with an attempt by an outsider to ask something insightful and failing to do so. It's the equivalent of asking Lance Armstrong how many times he shifts gears during the Tour de France.
The only real answer, "It depends on the position and how much time I have," is unsatisfying. In what may have been my best tournament game at the 1999 Hoogovens tournament in the Netherlands, I visualized the winning position a full fifteen moves ahead--an unusual feat. I sacrificed a great deal of material for an attack, burning my bridges; if my calculations were faulty I would be dead lost. Although my intuition was correct and my opponent, Topalov again, failed to find the best defense under pressure, subsequent analysis showed that despite my Herculean effort I had missed a shorter route to victory. Capablanca's sarcasm aside, correctly evaluating a small handful of moves is far more important in human chess, and human decision-making in general, than the systematically deeper and deeper search for better moves--the number of moves "seen ahead"--that computers rely on.
There is little doubt that different people are blessed with different amounts of cognitive gifts such as long-term memory and the visuospatial skills chess players are said to employ. One of the reasons chess is an "unparalleled laboratory" and a "unique nexus" is that it demands high performance from so many of the brain's functions. Where so many of these investigations fail on a practical level is by not recognizing the importance of the process of learning and playing chess. The ability to work hard for days on end without losing focus is a talent. The ability to keep absorbing new information after many hours of study is a talent. Programming yourself by analyzing your decision-making outcomes and processes can improve results much the way that a smarter chess algorithm will play better than another running on the same computer. We might not be able to change our hardware, but we can definitely upgrade our software.
With the supremacy of the chess machines now apparent and the contest of "Man vs. Machine" a thing of the past, perhaps it is time to return to the goals that made computer chess so attractive to many of the finest minds of the twentieth century. Playing better chess was a problem they wanted to solve, yes, and it has been solved. But there were other goals as well: to develop a program that played chess by thinking like a human, perhaps even by learning the game as a human does. Surely this would be a far more fruitful avenue of investigation than creating, as we are doing, ever-faster algorithms to run on ever-faster hardware.
This is our last chess metaphor, then--a metaphor for how we have discarded innovation and creativity in exchange for a steady supply of marketable products. The dreams of creating an artificial intelligence that would engage in an ancient game symbolic of human thought have been abandoned. Instead, every year we have new chess programs, and new versions of old ones, that are all based on the same basic programming concepts for picking a move by searching through millions of possibilities that were developed in the 1960s and 1970s.
Like so much else in our technology-rich and innovation-poor modern world, chess computing has fallen prey to incrementalism and the demands of the market. Brute-force programs play the best chess, so why bother with anything else? Why waste time and money experimenting with new and innovative ideas when we already know what works? Such thinking should horrify anyone worthy of the name of scientist, but it seems, tragically, to be the norm. Our best minds have gone into financial engineering instead of real engineering, with catastrophic results for both sectors.
Perhaps chess is the wrong game for the times. Poker is now everywhere, as amateurs dream of winning millions and being on television for playing a card game whose complexities can be detailed on a single piece of paper. But while chess is a 100 percent information game--both players are aware of all the data all the time--and therefore directly susceptible to computing power, poker has hidden cards and variable stakes, creating critical roles for chance, bluffing, and risk management.
These might seem to be aspects of poker based entirely on human psychology and therefore invulnerable to computer incursion. A machine can trivially calculate the odds of every hand, but what to make of an opponent with poor odds making a large bet? And yet the computers are advancing here as well. Jonathan Schaeffer, the inventor of the checkers-solving program, has moved on to poker and his digital players are performing better and better against strong humans--with obvious implications for online gambling sites.
Perhaps the current trend of many chess professionals taking up the more lucrative pastime of poker is not a wholly negative one. It may not be too late for humans to relearn how to take risks in order to innovate and thereby maintain the advanced lifestyles we enjoy. And if it takes a poker-playing supercomputer to remind us that we can't enjoy the rewards without taking the risks, so be it.
Garry Kasparov is the chairman of the United Civil Front and a cofounder of The Other Russia, a pro-democracy coalition opposing the administration of Vladimir Putin. He became the youngest-ever World Chess Champion at the age of twenty-two in 1985 and remained the top-ranked chess player in the world for twenty years until retiring from professional chess in 2005.
Paul Krugman's succinct analysis of President Obama's first year states clearly both the problems and the solutions. While trying to steer a bipartisan middle course, trusting the banks to act responsibly during the financial bailout, and trusting his economic advisers that the stimulus program is sufficient, President Obama failed to put a stamp on his Administration, to assert that Republican policies for the last eight years put America in this current mess, and irresponsible banks must be held accountable.
Perhaps it is not too late for President Obama to stand up and be counted. Perhaps now the obstructionist Republicans will think twice before blocking health care and other social legislation for the good of America. Perhaps the big banks will now think twice before they bully governments and the public into accepting their willful irresponsible behavior.
Their true colors are already there for all to see. President Obama has no reason to be gentle with the lot of them. It's time for change.
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Lately many people have been second-guessing the Obama administration’s political strategy. The conventional wisdom seems to be that President Obama tried to do too much — in particular, that he should have put health care on one side and focused on the economy.
I disagree. The Obama administration’s troubles are the result not of excessive ambition, but of policy and political misjudgments. The stimulus was too small; policy toward the banks wasn’t tough enough; and Mr. Obama didn’t do what Ronald Reagan, who also faced a poor economy early in his administration, did — namely, shelter himself from criticism with a narrative that placed the blame on previous administrations.
About the stimulus: it has surely helped. Without it, unemployment would be much higher than it is. But the administration’s program clearly wasn’t big enough to produce job gains in 2009.
Why was the stimulus underpowered? A number of economists (myself included) called for a stimulus substantially bigger than the one the administration ended up proposing. According to The New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza, however, in December 2008 Mr. Obama’s top economic and political advisers concluded that a bigger stimulus was neither economically necessary nor politically feasible.
Their political judgment may or may not have been correct; their economic judgment obviously wasn’t. Whatever led to this misjudgment, however, it wasn’t failure to focus on the issue: in late 2008 and early 2009 the Obama team was focused on little else. The administration wasn’t distracted; it was just wrong.
The same can be said about policy toward the banks. Some economists defend the administration’s decision not to take a harder line on banks, arguing that the banks are earning their way back to financial health. But the light-touch approach to the financial industry further entrenched the power of the very institutions that caused the crisis, even as it failed to revive lending: bailed-out banks have been reducing, not increasing, their loan balances. And it has had disastrous political consequences: the administration has placed itself on the wrong side of popular rage over bailouts and bonuses.
Finally, about that narrative: It’s instructive to compare Mr. Obama’s rhetorical stance on the economy with that of Ronald Reagan. It’s often forgotten now, but unemployment actually soared after Reagan’s 1981 tax cut. Reagan, however, had a ready answer for critics: everything going wrong was the result of the failed policies of the past. In effect, Reagan spent his first few years in office continuing to run against Jimmy Carter.
Mr. Obama could have done the same — with, I’d argue, considerably more justice. He could have pointed out, repeatedly, that the continuing troubles of America’s economy are the result of a financial crisis that developed under the Bush administration, and was at least in part the result of the Bush administration’s refusal to regulate the banks.
But he didn’t. Maybe he still dreams of bridging the partisan divide; maybe he fears the ire of pundits who consider blaming your predecessor for current problems uncouth — if you’re a Democrat. (It’s O.K. if you’re a Republican.) Whatever the reason, Mr. Obama has allowed the public to forget, with remarkable speed, that the economy’s troubles didn’t start on his watch.
So where do complaints of an excessively broad agenda fit into all this? Could the administration have made a midcourse correction on economic policy if it hadn’t been fighting battles on health care? Probably not. One key argument of those pushing for a bigger stimulus plan was that there would be no second chance: if unemployment remained high, they warned, people would conclude that stimulus doesn’t work rather than that we needed a bigger dose. And so it has proved.
It’s important to remember, also, how important health care reform is to the Democratic base. Some activists have been left disillusioned by the compromises made to get legislation through the Senate — but they would have been even more disillusioned if Democrats had simply punted on the issue.
And politics should be about more than winning elections. Even if health care reform loses Democrats’ votes (which is questionable), it’s the right thing to do.
So what comes next?
At this point Mr. Obama probably can’t do much about job creation. He can, however, push hard on financial reform, and seek to put himself back on the right side of public anger by portraying Republicans as the enemies of reform — which they are.
And meanwhile, Democrats have to do whatever it takes to enact a health care bill. Passing such a bill won’t be their political salvation — but not passing a bill would surely be their political doom.
The Obama Nobel Peace Prize lecture is arguably one of his most profound speeches. It encompasses the greatest scope of human endeavor and touches on the deepest philosophical thought. It calls forth visions from past great illuminaries who carried the torch of peace on our collective journey to a better future, and elucidates a roadmap to achieve a lasting just peace. It leans neither to the self-righteous right nor the bleeding heart left, but steers a confident and prudent middle course that respects the dignity of individuals while defending the responsibilities of national sovereignty.
President Obama made the important and often overlooked distinction between a yearning for peace, and the necessarily forceful strategy to find peace in a real world, filled with historical animosity and selfish evil men. He echoed President Kennedy's exhortation to not expect a miraculous change in human nature, but work instead towards the evolution of human institutions that uphold a just peace. He cited the examplery works of Ghandi and King while professing unapologetically his duties as the leader of a nation to defend his people with whatever means necessary. At the same time, he reminded the world that it is not enough to achieve goals with power, but it is how we carry out our plans, either according to internationally recognized rules of conduct or according to our own arbitrary whims, which defines our moral character. In my opinion, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded for his renewal of America's commitment to a high moral standard, not when it is easy, but when it is hard, during a diffuse non-traditional war against a ruthless indiscriminate terrorist enemy. In the earlist opportunity in his administration, President Obama lived according to the words in his address, by reaching out to the international community to achieve consensus in all the actions that he considered necessary to resolve regional and international conflicts.
The keystone to his commitment to a lasting just peace, is his conviction that peace requires responsibility, both nationally and internationally. It is not enough to wish for, to desire, to yearn for an absence of conflicts; it requires those who believe in peace to act when injustice and oppression injure the climate of peace. The Obama Doctrine states unequivocally that the international community has a responsibility to make those who violate good conduct accountable, either by censure or sanction, and even with forceful action if necessary, when all else have failed, as in the case of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, or the conflict in Bosnia.
In addition to the international responsibility for a lasting just peace, there is also the national responsibility for the dignity of each individual, not only in the traditional sense of human rights to free speech, freedom for assembly, and freedom for self-determination, but also the freedom from want, the economic security as well as physical security. This vision of a just peace transcends the peace without conflicts, and highlights the urgency for the world to come together to deal with climate change and financial reform. The institutions that have served so well for decades are now buckling under the stress of changes brought on by globalization. New institutions and reforms to the old ones are needed to prepare for what must be done in the new century.
The unique and lasting legacy of President Obama's address is the reference to the universal Golden Rule among the world's religions to exhort the world towards a moral imagination to have hope in a common future, in the shared dream of human progress. It is this vision of faith in human goodness, this hope for humanity's future in the midst of a chaotic past that defines the Nobel Peace Prize, and its recipients.
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THE PRESIDENT: Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, distinguished members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, citizens of America, and citizens of the world: I receive this honor with deep gratitude and great humility. It is an award that speaks to our highest aspirations -- that for all the cruelty and hardship of our world, we are not mere prisoners of fate. Our actions matter, and can bend history in the direction of justice.
And yet I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the considerable controversy that your generous decision has generated. (Laughter.) In part, this is because I am at the beginning, and not the end, of my labors on the world stage. Compared to some of the giants of history who've received this prize -- Schweitzer and King; Marshall and Mandela -- my accomplishments are slight. And then there are the men and women around the world who have been jailed and beaten in the pursuit of justice; those who toil in humanitarian organizations to relieve suffering; the unrecognized millions whose quiet acts of courage and compassion inspire even the most hardened cynics. I cannot argue with those who find these men and women -- some known, some obscure to all but those they help -- to be far more deserving of this honor than I.
But perhaps the most profound issue surrounding my receipt of this prize is the fact that I am the Commander-in-Chief of the military of a nation in the midst of two wars. One of these wars is winding down. The other is a conflict that America did not seek; one in which we are joined by 42 other countries -- including Norway -- in an effort to defend ourselves and all nations from further attacks.
Still, we are at war, and I'm responsible for the deployment of thousands of young Americans to battle in a distant land. Some will kill, and some will be killed. And so I come here with an acute sense of the costs of armed conflict -- filled with difficult questions about the relationship between war and peace, and our effort to replace one with the other.
Now these questions are not new. War, in one form or another, appeared with the first man. At the dawn of history, its morality was not questioned; it was simply a fact, like drought or disease -- the manner in which tribes and then civilizations sought power and settled their differences.
And over time, as codes of law sought to control violence within groups, so did philosophers and clerics and statesmen seek to regulate the destructive power of war. The concept of a "just war" emerged, suggesting that war is justified only when certain conditions were met: if it is waged as a last resort or in self-defense; if the force used is proportional; and if, whenever possible, civilians are spared from violence.
Of course, we know that for most of history, this concept of "just war" was rarely observed. The capacity of human beings to think up new ways to kill one another proved inexhaustible, as did our capacity to exempt from mercy those who look different or pray to a different God. Wars between armies gave way to wars between nations -- total wars in which the distinction between combatant and civilian became blurred. In the span of 30 years, such carnage would twice engulf this continent. And while it's hard to conceive of a cause more just than the defeat of the Third Reich and the Axis powers, World War II was a conflict in which the total number of civilians who died exceeded the number of soldiers who perished.
In the wake of such destruction, and with the advent of the nuclear age, it became clear to victor and vanquished alike that the world needed institutions to prevent another world war. And so, a quarter century after the United States Senate rejected the League of Nations -- an idea for which Woodrow Wilson received this prize -- America led the world in constructing an architecture to keep the peace: a Marshall Plan and a United Nations, mechanisms to govern the waging of war, treaties to protect human rights, prevent genocide, restrict the most dangerous weapons.
In many ways, these efforts succeeded. Yes, terrible wars have been fought, and atrocities committed. But there has been no Third World War. The Cold War ended with jubilant crowds dismantling a wall. Commerce has stitched much of the world together. Billions have been lifted from poverty.
The ideals of liberty and self-determination, equality and the rule of law have haltingly advanced. We are the heirs of the fortitude and foresight of generations past, and it is a legacy for which my own country is rightfully proud.
And yet, a decade into a new century, this old architecture is buckling under the weight of new threats. The world may no longer shudder at the prospect of war between two nuclear superpowers, but proliferation may increase the risk of catastrophe. Terrorism has long been a tactic, but modern technology allows a few small men with outsized rage to murder innocents on a horrific scale.
Moreover, wars between nations have increasingly given way to wars within nations. The resurgence of ethnic or sectarian conflicts; the growth of secessionist movements, insurgencies, and failed states -- all these things have increasingly trapped civilians in unending chaos. In today's wars, many more civilians are killed than soldiers; the seeds of future conflict are sown, economies are wrecked, civil societies torn asunder, refugees amassed, children scarred.
I do not bring with me today a definitive solution to the problems of war. What I do know is that meeting these challenges will require the same vision, hard work, and persistence of those men and women who acted so boldly decades ago. And it will require us to think in new ways about the notions of just war and the imperatives of a just peace.
We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth: We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations -- acting individually or in concert -- will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.
I make this statement mindful of what Martin Luther King Jr. said in this same ceremony years ago: "Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones." As someone who stands here as a direct consequence of Dr. King's life work, I am living testimony to the moral force of non-violence. I know there's nothing weak -- nothing passive -- nothing naïve -- in the creed and lives of Gandhi and King.
But as a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by their examples alone. I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda's leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism -- it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.
I raise this point, I begin with this point because in many countries there is a deep ambivalence about military action today, no matter what the cause. And at times, this is joined by a reflexive suspicion of America, the world's sole military superpower.
But the world must remember that it was not simply international institutions -- not just treaties and declarations -- that brought stability to a post-World War II world. Whatever mistakes we have made, the plain fact is this: The United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms. The service and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform has promoted peace and prosperity from Germany to Korea, and enabled democracy to take hold in places like the Balkans. We have borne this burden not because we seek to impose our will. We have done so out of enlightened self-interest -- because we seek a better future for our children and grandchildren, and we believe that their lives will be better if others' children and grandchildren can live in freedom and prosperity.
So yes, the instruments of war do have a role to play in preserving the peace. And yet this truth must coexist with another -- that no matter how justified, war promises human tragedy.The soldier's courage and sacrifice is full of glory, expressing devotion to country, to cause, to comrades in arms. But war itself is never glorious, and we must never trumpet it as such.
So part of our challenge is reconciling these two seemingly inreconcilable truths -- that war is sometimes necessary, and war at some level is an expression of human folly. Concretely, we must direct our effort to the task that President Kennedy called for long ago. "Let us focus," he said, "on a more practical, more attainable peace, based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution in human institutions." A gradual evolution of human institutions.
What might this evolution look like? What might these practical steps be? To begin with, I believe that all nations -- strong and weak alike -- must adhere to standards that govern the use of force. I -- like any head of state -- reserve the right to act unilaterally if necessary to defend my nation.
Nevertheless, I am convinced that adhering to standards, international standards, strengthens those who do, and isolates and weakens those who don't.
The world rallied around America after the 9/11 attacks, and continues to support our efforts in Afghanistan, because of the horror of those senseless attacks and the recognized principle of self-defense. Likewise, the world recognized the need to confront Saddam Hussein when he invaded Kuwait -- a consensus that sent a clear message to all about the cost of aggression.
Furthermore, America -- in fact, no nation -- can insist that others follow the rules of the road if we refuse to follow them ourselves. For when we don't, our actions appear arbitrary and undercut the legitimacy of future interventions, no matter how justified.
And this becomes particularly important when the purpose of military action extends beyond self-defense or the defense of one nation against an aggressor. More and more, we all confront difficult questions about how to prevent the slaughter of civilians by their own government, or to stop a civil war whose violence and suffering can engulf an entire region.
I believe that force can be justified on humanitarian grounds, as it was in the Balkans, or in other places that have been scarred by war. Inaction tears at our conscience and can lead to more costly intervention later. That's why all responsible nations must embrace the role that militaries with a clear mandate can play to keep the peace.
America's commitment to global security will never waver. But in a world in which threats are more diffuse, and missions more complex, America cannot act alone. America alone cannot secure the peace. This is true in Afghanistan. This is true in failed states like Somalia, where terrorism and piracy is joined by famine and human suffering. And sadly, it will continue to be true in unstable regions for years to come.
The leaders and soldiers of NATO countries, and other friends and allies, demonstrate this truth through the capacity and courage they've shown in Afghanistan. But in many countries, there is a disconnect between the efforts of those who serve and the ambivalence of the broader public. I understand why war is not popular, but I also know this: The belief that peace is desirable is rarely enough to achieve it. Peace requires responsibility. Peace entails sacrifice. That's why NATO continues to be indispensable. That's why we must strengthen U.N. and regional peacekeeping, and not leave the task to a few countries. That's why we honor those who return home from peacekeeping and training abroad to Oslo and Rome; to Ottawa and Sydney; to Dhaka and Kigali -- we honor them not as makers of war, but of wagers -- but as wagers of peace.
Let me make one final point about the use of force. Even as we make difficult decisions about going to war, we must also think clearly about how we fight it. The Nobel Committee recognized this truth in awarding its first prize for peace to Henry Dunant -- the founder of the Red Cross, and a driving force behind the Geneva Conventions.
Where force is necessary, we have a moral and strategic interest in binding ourselves to certain rules of conduct. And even as we confront a vicious adversary that abides by no rules, I believe the United States of America must remain a standard bearer in the conduct of war. That is what makes us different from those whom we fight. That is a source of our strength. That is why I prohibited torture. That is why I ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed. And that is why I have reaffirmed America's commitment to abide by the Geneva Conventions. We lose ourselves when we compromise the very ideals that we fight to defend. (Applause.) And we honor -- we honor those ideals by upholding them not when it's easy, but when it is hard.
I have spoken at some length to the question that must weigh on our minds and our hearts as we choose to wage war. But let me now turn to our effort to avoid such tragic choices, and speak of three ways that we can build a just and lasting peace.
First, in dealing with those nations that break rules and laws, I believe that we must develop alternatives to violence that are tough enough to actually change behavior -- for if we want a lasting peace, then the words of the international community must mean something. Those regimes that break the rules must be held accountable. Sanctions must exact a real price.
Intransigence must be met with increased pressure -- and such pressure exists only when the world stands together as one.
One urgent example is the effort to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, and to seek a world without them. In the middle of the last century, nations agreed to be bound by a treaty whose bargain is clear: All will have access to peaceful nuclear power; those without nuclear weapons will forsake them; and those with nuclear weapons will work towards disarmament. I am committed to upholding this treaty. It is a centerpiece of my foreign policy. And I'm working with President Medvedev to reduce America and Russia's nuclear stockpiles.
But it is also incumbent upon all of us to insist that nations like Iran and North Korea do not game the system. Those who claim to respect international law cannot avert their eyes when those laws are flouted. Those who care for their own security cannot ignore the danger of an arms race in the Middle East or East Asia. Those who seek peace cannot stand idly by as nations arm themselves for nuclear war.
The same principle applies to those who violate international laws by brutalizing their own people. When there is genocide in Darfur, systematic rape in Congo, repression in Burma -- there must be consequences. Yes, there will be engagement; yes, there will be diplomacy -- but there must be consequences when those things fail. And the closer we stand together, the less likely we will be faced with the choice between armed intervention and complicity in oppression.
This brings me to a second point -- the nature of the peace that we seek. For peace is not merely the absence of visible conflict. Only a just peace based on the inherent rights and dignity of every individual can truly be lasting.
It was this insight that drove drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights after the Second World War. In the wake of devastation, they recognized that if human rights are not protected, peace is a hollow promise.
And yet too often, these words are ignored. For some countries, the failure to uphold human rights is excused by the false suggestion that these are somehow Western principles, foreign to local cultures or stages of a nation's development. And within America, there has long been a tension between those who describe themselves as realists or idealists -- a tension that suggests a stark choice between the narrow pursuit of interests or an endless campaign to impose our values around the world.
I reject these choices. I believe that peace is unstable where citizens are denied the right to speak freely or worship as they please; choose their own leaders or assemble without fear. Pent-up grievances fester, and the suppression of tribal and religious identity can lead to violence. We also know that the opposite is true. Only when Europe became free did it finally find peace. America has never fought a war against a democracy, and our closest friends are governments that protect the rights of their citizens. No matter how callously defined, neither America's interests -- nor the world's -- are served by the denial of human aspirations.
So even as we respect the unique culture and traditions of different countries, America will always be a voice for those aspirations that are universal. We will bear witness to the quiet dignity of reformers like Aung Sang Suu Kyi; to the bravery of Zimbabweans who cast their ballots in the face of beatings; to the hundreds of thousands who have marched silently through the streets of Iran. It is telling that the leaders of these governments fear the aspirations of their own people more than the power of any other nation. And it is the responsibility of all free people and free nations to make clear that these movements -- these movements of hope and history -- they have us on their side.
Let me also say this: The promotion of human rights cannot be about exhortation alone. At times, it must be coupled with painstaking diplomacy. I know that engagement with repressive regimes lacks the satisfying purity of indignation. But I also know that sanctions without outreach -- condemnation without discussion -- can carry forward only a crippling status quo. No repressive regime can move down a new path unless it has the choice of an open door.
In light of the Cultural Revolution's horrors, Nixon's meeting with Mao appeared inexcusable -- and yet it surely helped set China on a path where millions of its citizens have been lifted from poverty and connected to open societies. Pope John Paul's engagement with Poland created space not just for the Catholic Church, but for labor leaders like Lech Walesa. Ronald Reagan's efforts on arms control and embrace of perestroika not only improved relations with the Soviet Union, but empowered dissidents throughout Eastern Europe.
There's no simple formula here. But we must try as best we can to balance isolation and engagement, pressure and incentives, so that human rights and dignity are advanced over time.
Third, a just peace includes not only civil and political rights -- it must encompass economic security and opportunity. For true peace is not just freedom from fear, but freedom from want.
It is undoubtedly true that development rarely takes root without security; it is also true that security does not exist where human beings do not have access to enough food, or clean water, or the medicine and shelter they need to survive. It does not exist where children can't aspire to a decent education or a job that supports a family. The absence of hope can rot a society from within.
And that's why helping farmers feed their own people -- or nations educate their children and care for the sick -- is not mere charity. It's also why the world must come together to confront climate change. There is little scientific dispute that if we do nothing, we will face more drought, more famine, more mass displacement -- all of which will fuel more conflict for decades. For this reason, it is not merely scientists and environmental activists who call for swift and forceful action -- it's military leaders in my own country and others who understand our common security hangs in the balance.
Agreements among nations. Strong institutions. Support for human rights. Investments in development. All these are vital ingredients in bringing about the evolution that President Kennedy spoke about. And yet, I do not believe that we will have the will, the determination, the staying power, to complete this work without something more -- and that's the continued expansion of our moral imagination; an insistence that there's something irreducible that we all share.
As the world grows smaller, you might think it would be easier for human beings to recognize how similar we are; to understand that we're all basically seeking the same things; that we all hope for the chance to live out our lives with some measure of happiness and fulfillment for ourselves and our families.
And yet somehow, given the dizzying pace of globalization, the cultural leveling of modernity, it perhaps comes as no surprise that people fear the loss of what they cherish in their particular identities -- their race, their tribe, and perhaps most powerfully their religion. In some places, this fear has led to conflict. At times, it even feels like we're moving backwards. We see it in the Middle East, as the conflict between Arabs and Jews seems to harden. We see it in nations that are torn asunder by tribal lines.
And most dangerously, we see it in the way that religion is used to justify the murder of innocents by those who have distorted and defiled the great religion of Islam, and who attacked my country from Afghanistan. These extremists are not the first to kill in the name of God; the cruelties of the Crusades are amply recorded. But they remind us that no Holy War can ever be a just war.
For if you truly believe that you are carrying out divine will, then there is no need for restraint -- no need to spare the pregnant mother, or the medic, or the Red Cross worker, or even a person of one's own faith. Such a warped view of religion is not just incompatible with the concept of peace, but I believe it's incompatible with the very purpose of faith -- for the one rule that lies at the heart of every major religion is that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us.
Adhering to this law of love has always been the core struggle of human nature. For we are fallible. We make mistakes, and fall victim to the temptations of pride, and power, and sometimes evil. Even those of us with the best of intentions will at times fail to right the wrongs before us.
But we do not have to think that human nature is perfect for us to still believe that the human condition can be perfected. We do not have to live in an idealized world to still reach for those ideals that will make it a better place. The non-violence practiced by men like Gandhi and King may not have been practical or possible in every circumstance, but the love that they preached -- their fundamental faith in human progress -- that must always be the North Star that guides us on our journey.
For if we lose that faith -- if we dismiss it as silly or naïve; if we divorce it from the decisions that we make on issues of war and peace -- then we lose what's best about humanity. We lose our sense of possibility. We lose our moral compass.
Like generations have before us, we must reject that future. As Dr. King said at this occasion so many years ago, "I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the 'isness' of man's present condition makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal 'oughtness' that forever confronts him."
Let us reach for the world that ought to be -- that spark of the divine that still stirs within each of our souls. (Applause.)
Somewhere today, in the here and now, in the world as it is, a soldier sees he's outgunned, but stands firm to keep the peace. Somewhere today, in this world, a young protester awaits the brutality of her government, but has the courage to march on. Somewhere today, a mother facing punishing poverty still takes the time to teach her child, scrapes together what few coins she has to send that child to school -- because she believes that a cruel world still has a place for that child's dreams.
Let us live by their example. We can acknowledge that oppression will always be with us, and still strive for justice. We can admit the intractability of deprivation, and still strive for dignity. Clear-eyed, we can understand that there will be war, and still strive for peace. We can do that -- for that is the story of human progress; that's the hope of all the world; and at this moment of challenge, that must be our work here on Earth.
In the words of an Afghan student in China, "The young people of Afghanistan want a country with a bright future. To have a country with a good name among other countries, not one that is infamous."
"I want to further my education so that my children can be educated, too."
"Our country is hurt. And like the country, our people are hurt, too. Not just physically but mentally and spiritually."
The military mission President Obama gave to General McCrystal is clear, and well resourced, to give the Afghan people a chance for a brighter future.
The civil and diplomatic surge tied to the military mission makes the brighter future possible.
America is not alone in this mission. With dozens of other countries in the world participating, America will again regain the moral leadership to give light to a dark corner.
Excerpts
Afghani students learn kungfu at Taiyuan University of Technology. Photos by Brendan Worrell
At the age of 14, Aman was forced to quit school, leave home and seek asylum in neighboring Iran. "My uncle and I traveled days by bus, car and foot until we managed to find safety and employment, two things absent back home in Afghanistan."
Then with the terrorist attacks of Sept 11, 2001, and the subsequent fall of the Taliban, Aman was able to return to his homeland - although conditions were still precarious.
At one time while traveling by car back to his town from Kabul, he was stopped by bandits and robbed at gunpoint of all his possessions.
Almost a decade later, Aman's journey continues, where he finds himself at a more tranquil locale, at Taiyuan University of Technology (TUT) in Northwest China's Shanxi province, studying for a Bachelor's degree in Chinese. He is part of the first group of Afghani students in a new program set up by Afghanistan's Kabul University and China's TUT, funded by the Chinese Ministry of Education and Culture's Hanban office.
Thirteen Afghani students are being funded to study for two years in China with free tuition, board and food, plus a monthly stipend.
Expectations are high for these students who after graduation will be proficient to work at the forefront of cross-border trade and diplomatic exchanges slowly developing between China and Afghanistan.
Afghan students get a taste of Chinese life
Aman and his fellow students have already spent eight weeks in China and with little more than a year of studying Chinese in Kabul, the group is doing exceptionally well. They are able to read characters at a pre-intermediate level in a class taught entirely in Chinese.
Their teacher Shen Xiaoyan conducts the class with a glow in her eyes that conveys the pride she has developed for her students - the majority of whom tower above her in height.
It's a surprise they can even get their legs under the desks as they curl their backs and necks to read through their textbooks.
One dialogue in class is about buying a laptop computer and shopping in Beijing's famous Wangfujing mall.
Teacher Shen throws out questions in Chinese and the students respond on cue, not missing a beat though in slightly accented Afghani Chinese.
Such will be their life in Taiyuan until February 2011, with most classes beginning at 8:30 am and finishing late in the afternoon.
Most are up until midnight studying in their rooms with many already eager to get out and explore what wider China has to offer beyond the campus.
"I want to go to Shanghai," one blurts out.
"No, I want to go to Beijing and see the Great Wall," another interjects.
Professor Zhao Anyuan, vice dean of TUT's College of International Education Exchange, says they will try to organize trips for the group, although sticking to the budget is a priority.
While only two Afghani students share a room, most Chinese students at Taiyuan usually lodge with about eight other students, Zhao says.
Shen says she has taught students of many nationalities and Afghanis are no different. The smaller class size helps her to pay more attention to each student.
Afghan students get a taste of Chinese life
When asked what has been the hardest thing for them in a new country, without hesitation Aman and his classmate Shaheen respond: "The food!"
"Chinese food is so different," Shaheen explains, "the vegetables they use and the way they cook them is different from that in our country food. Also, we are Muslim."
The university cafeteria, like most Chinese universities', has a Muslim restaurant catering for their needs. Nevertheless, it will take time for the group to learn the menu and, until then, they usually just point and choose, telling the cooks what they would like to eat.
Later in the afternoon, the students don their sports attire and gather at the quadrangle outside the gym. It's -13C but no one complains.
Some lend a hand to the local Chinese students who are busy shoveling snow that is rapidly turning to ice, making walking and driving dangerous.
One couple, like young people anywhere, soon starts hurling snowballs at each other.
An older student, Ishmat, shifts from one foot to the other and murmurs: "Our country is hurt. And like the country, our people are hurt, too. Not just physically but mentally and spiritually."
Then with a wry grimace he turns away and goes back to his usual introverted self.
Finally, after the students have waited half an hour in the freezing cold, an apologetic PE teacher Professor Zhang greets them and quickly marshals them into formation. He is the provincial wushu champion and well into his middle age while still looking supple and robust.
Though initially haphazard and ragged, in time the young Afghanis too begin to gel, punching and kicking the air in unison.
It's a process that seems to personify their determination and potential for triumph, once given the chance, some structure and training.
Aman's pal Shaheen says that after the four-year degree program, the group hopes to find work as translators or interpreters for the private or public sector.
Becoming a teacher and instructing others in Chinese is also another job option.
Aman, who speaks very good English he learnt from a Pakistani teacher in less than two years, says he hopes for more opportunities for Afghani students to be able to study and particularly to study abroad.
"I want to further my education so that my children can be educated, too."
Shaheen goes further, encapsulating the stark trauma of their predicament.
"The young people of Afghanistan want a country with a bright future. To have a country with a good name among other countries, not one that is infamous."
Taking Confucius to Kabul
While Aman and 12 others from Afghanistan learn Chinese in Taiyuan, Shanxi province, more students back in Kabul also have a chance to learn about Chinese culture with the opening of a Confucius Center on Nov 10.
Professor Zhao Anyuan, director of the Confucius Center in Kabul University, says a second and larger group of Afghani students chosen for a joint program between Kabul University and the Taiyuan University of Technology (TUT) is expected to arrive in Taiyuan early next year. They are currently learning Chinese from a Taiyuan instructor on the Kabul campus.
Zhao, also vice-dean of the College of International Education Exchange at TUT, says students will spend the first year in Kabul, the next two years at Taiyuan and the last year back home.
The joint program goes back to last January, when the Chinese and Afghani governments signed an agreement to commence a language program, thanks to an earlier conversation between Afghani President Hamid Karzai and his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao.
In that conversation, Karzai expressed his desire for an institute to teach the Chinese language to be set up in his home country.
The Taiyuan university had been seeking, via the Ministry of Education's Hanban office, to link up with foreign campuses.
The first pilot Confucius program was established in Uzbekistan in 2004. By August this year, 356 Confucius Institutes had been set up in 84 countries and regions.
However, when the invitation came to team up with Kabul, staff at Taiyuan were slightly cautious, although in time they soon embraced the idea and the challenge.
As the pioneering teacher in Afghanistan, Wang Huangqing took a job few would consider. As a husband and father to a young child, he admits it wasn't an easy decision.
"I had never been abroad before and never had a chance to use the English language, which I majored in. The opportunity would make my dream come true."
In a country where the average life expectancy is less than 50 years and where over half the population cannot read or write, director Zhao says one of the biggest challenges is not so much the harsh living conditions as the security situation. He says this means it is hard to recruit people to work there as they think it is too dangerous.
Wang agrees: "People all over the world know that the situation in Afghanistan is worse than other places because of the war. So guaranteeing one's personal security was a big worry."
Zhao says each time he turns up in Kabul, the Chinese embassy frets over his safety. "They tell us not to go out with strange people, even those dressed in police and soldier uniforms - as they may be kidnappers in disguise."
But the ordinary Afghanis Zhao met are so friendly that it makes him forget about the war.
Wang says the people of Kabul and the students have also left him with good impressions.
"They have good manners and are very polite to teachers and among themselves. Those students are very smart and hard working."
A test for truly great leadership is not popularity nor authority, but a leader's vision that divines the most complex and muddy situation and delivers to his people a message that is clear and simple and inspirational. President Obama achieved that at West Point when he stated the result of his deliberation over America's commitment for Afghanistan.
He made clear the reason for the war in Afghanistan. He clarified the reason why the conditions on the ground are as messy as they are. He communicated his strategy to exit within a definitive time frame. And he answered the objections of some of his critics.
By reaching back to the horrific day of Sept. 11, 2001, President Obama made clear there is no alternative but to finish the job of securing Afghanistan from al Qaeda. In answering the critics who objected to a definitive time frame, he made clear the cost of war and the need for urgency to have the Afghan people to take up the responsibility for their own future. By siting the experience in Iraq, and post-war restoration efforts elsewhere, he made clear to the Afghan people that America's intention as a friend and partner, not as a conqueror nor occupier. By enumerating the economic cost of war and President Eisenhower's wisdom, he made clear the importance of balancing the priorities for the economy, not just security. By reflecting on the sacrifices made by the military men and women and their families, he made clear his commitments as Commander-in-Chief, in his support for the people on whom the nation depends.
The test of an effective leader is how he communicates the clarity of the goal, to create unity in the people, and to inspire their motivation to follow. President Obama's address to the future leaders of the Army passes with flying colors because it not only speaks with concise reason to the minds of the cadets, but also speaks with poignant inspiration to the hearts of the men and women in uniform.
Excerpts
Good evening. To the United States Corps of Cadets, to the men and women of our armed services, and to my fellow Americans: I want to speak to you tonight about our effort in Afghanistan - the nature of our commitment there, the scope of our interests, and the strategy that my Administration will pursue to bring this war to a successful conclusion. It is an honor for me to do so here - at West Point - where so many men and women have prepared to stand up for our security, and to represent what is finest about our country.
To address these issues, it is important to recall why America and our allies were compelled to fight a war in Afghanistan in the first place. We did not ask for this fight. On September 11, 2001, nineteen men hijacked four airplanes and used them to murder nearly 3,000 people. They struck at our military and economic nerve centers. They took the lives of innocent men, women, and children without regard to their faith or race or station. Were it not for the heroic actions of the passengers on board one of those flights, they could have also struck at one of the great symbols of our democracy in Washington, and killed many more.
As we know, these men belonged to al Qaeda - a group of extremists who have distorted and defiled Islam, one of the world's great religions, to justify the slaughter of innocents. Al Qaeda's base of operations was in Afghanistan, where they were harbored by the Taliban - a ruthless, repressive and radical movement that seized control of that country after it was ravaged by years of Soviet occupation and civil war, and after the attention of America and our friends had turned elsewhere.
Just days after 9/11, Congress authorized the use of force against al Qaeda and those who harbored them - an authorization that continues to this day. The vote in the Senate was 98 to 0. The vote in the House was 420 to 1. For the first time in its history, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization invoked Article 5 - the commitment that says an attack on one member nation is an attack on all. And the United Nations Security Council endorsed the use of all necessary steps to respond to the 9/11 attacks. America, our allies and the world were acting as one to destroy al Qaeda's terrorist network, and to protect our common security.
Under the banner of this domestic unity and international legitimacy - and only after the Taliban refused to turn over Osama bin Laden - we sent our troops into Afghanistan. Within a matter of months, al Qaeda was scattered and many of its operatives were killed. The Taliban was driven from power and pushed back on its heels. A place that had known decades of fear now had reason to hope. At a conference convened by the UN, a provisional government was established under President Hamid Karzai. And an International Security Assistance Force was established to help bring a lasting peace to a war-torn country.
Then, in early 2003, the decision was made to wage a second war in Iraq. The wrenching debate over the Iraq War is well-known and need not be repeated here. It is enough to say that for the next six years, the Iraq War drew the dominant share of our troops, our resources, our diplomacy, and our national attention - and that the decision to go into Iraq caused substantial rifts between America and much of the world.
Today, after extraordinary costs, we are bringing the Iraq war to a responsible end. We will remove our combat brigades from Iraq by the end of next summer, and all of our troops by the end of 2011. That we are doing so is a testament to the character of our men and women in uniform. Thanks to their courage, grit and perseverance , we have given Iraqis a chance to shape their future, and we are successfully leaving Iraq to its people.
But while we have achieved hard-earned milestones in Iraq, the situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated. After escaping across the border into Pakistan in 2001 and 2002, al Qaeda's leadership established a safe-haven there. Although a legitimate government was elected by the Afghan people, it has been hampered by corruption, the drug trade, an under-developed economy, and insufficient Security Forces. Over the last several years, the Taliban has maintained common cause with al Qaeda, as they both seek an overthrow of the Afghan government. Gradually, the Taliban has begun to take control over swaths of Afghanistan, while engaging in increasingly brazen and devastating acts of terrorism against the Pakistani people.
Throughout this period, our troop levels in Afghanistan remained a fraction of what they were in Iraq. When I took office, we had just over 32,000 Americans serving in Afghanistan, compared to 160,000 in Iraq at the peak of the war. Commanders in Afghanistan repeatedly asked for support to deal with the reemergence of the Taliban, but these reinforcements did not arrive. That's why, shortly after taking office, I approved a long-standing request for more troops. After consultations with our allies, I then announced a strategy recognizing the fundamental connection between our war effort in Afghanistan, and the extremist safe-havens in Pakistan. I set a goal that was narrowly defined as disrupting, dismantling, and defeating al Qaeda and its extremist allies, and pledged to better coordinate our military and civilian effort.
Since then, we have made progress on some important objectives. High-ranking al Qaeda and Taliban leaders have been killed, and we have stepped up the pressure on al Qaeda world-wide. In Pakistan, that nation's Army has gone on its largest offensive in years. In Afghanistan, we and our allies prevented the Taliban from stopping a presidential election, and - although it was marred by fraud - that election produced a government that is consistent with Afghanistan's laws and Constitution.
Yet huge challenges remain. Afghanistan is not lost, but for several years it has moved backwards. There is no imminent threat of the government being overthrown, but the Taliban has gained momentum. Al Qaeda has not reemerged in Afghanistan in the same numbers as before 9/11, but they retain their safe-havens along the border. And our forces lack the full support they need to effectively train and partner with Afghan Security Forces and better secure the population. Our new Commander in Afghanistan - General McChrystal - has reported that the security situation is more serious than he anticipated. In short: the status quo is not sustainable.
As cadets, you volunteered for service during this time of danger. Some of you have fought in Afghanistan. Many will deploy there. As your Commander-in-Chief, I owe you a mission that is clearly defined, and worthy of your service. That is why, after the Afghan voting was completed, I insisted on a thorough review of our strategy. Let me be clear: there has never been an option before me that called for troop deployments before 2010, so there has been no delay or denial of resources necessary for the conduct of the war. Instead, the review has allowed me ask the hard questions, and to explore all of the different options along with my national security team, our military and civilian leadership in Afghanistan, and with our key partners. Given the stakes involved, I owed the American people - and our troops - no less.
This review is now complete. And as Commander-in-Chief, I have determined that it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan. After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home. These are the resources that we need to seize the initiative, while building the Afghan capacity that can allow for a responsible transition of our forces out of Afghanistan.
I do not make this decision lightly. I opposed the war in Iraq precisely because I believe that we must exercise restraint in the use of military force, and always consider the long-term consequences of our actions. We have been at war for eight years, at enormous cost in lives and resources. Years of debate over Iraq and terrorism have left our unity on national security issues in tatters, and created a highly polarized and partisan backdrop for this effort. And having just experienced the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, the American people are understandably focused on rebuilding our economy and putting people to work here at home.
Most of all, I know that this decision asks even more of you - a military that, along with your families, has already borne the heaviest of all burdens. As President, I have signed a letter of condolence to the family of each American who gives their life in these wars. I have read the letters from the parents and spouses of those who deployed. I have visited our courageous wounded warriors at Walter Reed. I have travelled to Dover to meet the flag-draped caskets of 18 Americans returning home to their final resting place. I see firsthand the terrible wages of war. If I did not think that the security of the United States and the safety of the American people were at stake in Afghanistan, I would gladly order every single one of our troops home tomorrow.
So no - I do not make this decision lightly. I make this decision because I am convinced that our security is at stake in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is the epicenter of the violent extremism practiced by al Qaeda. It is from here that we were attacked on 9/11, and it is from here that new attacks are being plotted as I speak. This is no idle danger; no hypothetical threat. In the last few months alone, we have apprehended extremists within our borders who were sent here from the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan to commit new acts of terror. This danger will only grow if the region slides backwards, and al Qaeda can operate with impunity. We must keep the pressure on al Qaeda, and to do that, we must increase the stability and capacity of our partners in the region.
Of course, this burden is not ours alone to bear. This is not just America's war. Since 9/11, al Qaeda's safe-havens have been the source of attacks against London and Amman and Bali. The people and governments of both Afghanistan and Pakistan are endangered. And the stakes are even higher within a nuclear-armed Pakistan, because we know that al Qaeda and other extremists seek nuclear weapons, and we have every reason to believe that they would use them.
These facts compel us to act along with our friends and allies. Our overarching goal remains the same: to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and to prevent its capacity to threaten America and our allies in the future.
To meet that goal, we will pursue the following objectives within Afghanistan. We must deny al Qaeda a safe-haven. We must reverse the Taliban's momentum and deny it the ability to overthrow the government. And we must strengthen the capacity of Afghanistan's Security Forces and government, so that they can take lead responsibility for Afghanistan's future.
We will meet these objectives in three ways. First, we will pursue a military strategy that will break the Taliban's momentum and increase Afghanistan's capacity over the next 18 months.
The 30,000 additional troops that I am announcing tonight will deploy in the first part of 2010 - the fastest pace possible - so that they can target the insurgency and secure key population centers. They will increase our ability to train competent Afghan Security Forces, and to partner with them so that more Afghans can get into the fight. And they will help create the conditions for the United States to transfer responsibility to the Afghans.
Because this is an international effort, I have asked that our commitment be joined by contributions from our allies. Some have already provided additional troops, and we are confident that there will be further contributions in the days and weeks ahead. Our friends have fought and bled and died alongside us in Afghanistan. Now, we must come together to end this war successfully. For what's at stake is not simply a test of NATO's credibility - what's at stake is the security of our Allies, and the common security of the world.
Taken together, these additional American and international troops will allow us to accelerate handing over responsibility to Afghan forces, and allow us to begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011. Just as we have done in Iraq, we will execute this transition responsibly, taking into account conditions on the ground. We will continue to advise and assist Afghanistan's Security Forces to ensure that they can succeed over the long haul. But it will be clear to the Afghan government - and, more importantly, to the Afghan people - that they will ultimately be responsible for their own country.
Second, we will work with our partners, the UN, and the Afghan people to pursue a more effective civilian strategy, so that the government can take advantage of improved security.
This effort must be based on performance. The days of providing a blank check are over. President Karzai's inauguration speech sent the right message about moving in a new direction. And going forward, we will be clear about what we expect from those who receive our assistance. We will support Afghan Ministries, Governors, and local leaders that combat corruption and deliver for the people. We expect those who are ineffective or corrupt to be held accountable. And we will also focus our assistance in areas - such as agriculture - that can make an immediate impact in the lives of the Afghan people.
The people of Afghanistan have endured violence for decades. They have been confronted with occupation - by the Soviet Union, and then by foreign al Qaeda fighters who used Afghan land for their own purposes. So tonight, I want the Afghan people to understand - America seeks an end to this era of war and suffering. We have no interest in occupying your country. We will support efforts by the Afghan government to open the door to those Taliban who abandon violence and respect the human rights of their fellow citizens. And we will seek a partnership with Afghanistan grounded in mutual respect - to isolate those who destroy; to strengthen those who build; to hasten the day when our troops will leave; and to forge a lasting friendship in which America is your partner, and never your patron.
Third, we will act with the full recognition that our success in Afghanistan is inextricably linked to our partnership with Pakistan.
We are in Afghanistan to prevent a cancer from once again spreading through that country. But this same cancer has also taken root in the border region of Pakistan. That is why we need a strategy that works on both sides of the border.
In the past, there have been those in Pakistan who have argued that the struggle against extremism is not their fight, and that Pakistan is better off doing little or seeking accommodation with those who use violence. But in recent years, as innocents have been killed from Karachi to Islamabad, it has become clear that it is the Pakistani people who are the most endangered by extremism. Public opinion has turned. The Pakistani Army has waged an offensive in Swat and South Waziristan. And there is no doubt that the United States and Pakistan share a common enemy.
In the past, we too often defined our relationship with Pakistan narrowly. Those days are over. Moving forward, we are committed to a partnership with Pakistan that is built on a foundation of mutual interests, mutual respect, and mutual trust. We will strengthen Pakistan's capacity to target those groups that threaten our countries, and have made it clear that we cannot tolerate a safe-haven for terrorists whose location is known, and whose intentions are clear. America is also providing substantial resources to support Pakistan's democracy and development. We are the largest international supporter for those Pakistanis displaced by the fighting. And going forward, the Pakistani people must know: America will remain a strong supporter of Pakistan's security and prosperity long after the guns have fallen silent, so that the great potential of its people can be unleashed.
These are the three core elements of our strategy: a military effort to create the conditions for a transition; a civilian surge that reinforces positive action; and an effective partnership with Pakistan.
I recognize that there are a range of concerns about our approach. So let me briefly address a few of the prominent arguments that I have heard, and which I take very seriously.
First, there are those who suggest that Afghanistan is another Vietnam. They argue that it cannot be stabilized, and we are better off cutting our losses and rapidly withdrawing. Yet this argument depends upon a false reading of history. Unlike Vietnam, we are joined by a broad coalition of 43 nations that recognizes the legitimacy of our action. Unlike Vietnam, we are not facing a broad-based popular insurgency. And most importantly, unlike Vietnam, the American people were viciously attacked from Afghanistan, and remain a target for those same extremists who are plotting along its border. To abandon this area now - and to rely only on efforts against al Qaeda from a distance - would significantly hamper our ability to keep the pressure on al Qaeda, and create an unacceptable risk of additional attacks on our homeland and our allies.
Second, there are those who acknowledge that we cannot leave Afghanistan in its current state, but suggest that we go forward with the troops that we have. But this would simply maintain a status quo in which we muddle through, and permit a slow deterioration of conditions there. It would ultimately prove more costly and prolong our stay in Afghanistan, because we would never be able to generate the conditions needed to train Afghan Security Forces and give them the space to take over.
Finally, there are those who oppose identifying a timeframe for our transition to Afghan responsibility. Indeed, some call for a more dramatic and open-ended escalation of our war effort - one that would commit us to a nation building project of up to a decade. I reject this course because it sets goals that are beyond what we can achieve at a reasonable cost, and what we need to achieve to secure our interests. Furthermore, the absence of a timeframe for transition would deny us any sense of urgency in working with the Afghan government. It must be clear that Afghans will have to take responsibility for their security, and that America has no interest in fighting an endless war in Afghanistan.
As President, I refuse to set goals that go beyond our responsibility, our means, our or interests. And I must weigh all of the challenges that our nation faces. I do not have the luxury of committing to just one. Indeed, I am mindful of the words of President Eisenhower, who - in discussing our national security - said, "Each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs."
Over the past several years, we have lost that balance, and failed to appreciate the connection between our national security and our economy. In the wake of an economic crisis, too many of our friends and neighbors are out of work and struggle to pay the bills, and too many Americans are worried about the future facing our children. Meanwhile, competition within the global economy has grown more fierce. So we simply cannot afford to ignore the price of these wars.
All told, by the time I took office the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan approached a trillion dollars. Going forward, I am committed to addressing these costs openly and honestly. Our new approach in Afghanistan is likely to cost us roughly 30 billion dollars for the military this year, and I will work closely with Congress to address these costs as we work to bring down our deficit.
But as we end the war in Iraq and transition to Afghan responsibility, we must rebuild our strength here at home. Our prosperity provides a foundation for our power. It pays for our military. It underwrites our diplomacy. It taps the potential of our people, and allows investment in new industry. And it will allow us to compete in this century as successfully as we did in the last. That is why our troop commitment in Afghanistan cannot be open-ended - because the nation that I am most interested in building is our own.
Let me be clear: none of this will be easy. The struggle against violent extremism will not be finished quickly, and it extends well beyond Afghanistan and Pakistan. It will be an enduring test of our free society, and our leadership in the world. And unlike the great power conflicts and clear lines of division that defined the 20th century, our effort will involve disorderly regions and diffuse enemies.
So as a result, America will have to show our strength in the way that we end wars and prevent conflict. We will have to be nimble and precise in our use of military power. Where al Qaeda and its allies attempt to establish a foothold - whether in Somalia or Yemen or elsewhere - they must be confronted by growing pressure and strong partnerships.
And we cannot count on military might alone. We have to invest in our homeland security, because we cannot capture or kill every violent extremist abroad. We have to improve and better coordinate our intelligence, so that we stay one step ahead of shadowy networks.
We will have to take away the tools of mass destruction. That is why I have made it a central pillar of my foreign policy to secure loose nuclear materials from terrorists; to stop the spread of nuclear weapons; and to pursue the goal of a world without them. Because every nation must understand that true security will never come from an endless race for ever-more destructive weapons - true security will come for those who reject them.
We will have to use diplomacy, because no one nation can meet the challenges of an interconnected world acting alone. I have spent this year renewing our alliances and forging new partnerships. And we have forged a new beginning between America and the Muslim World - one that recognizes our mutual interest in breaking a cycle of conflict, and that promises a future in which those who kill innocents are isolated by those who stand up for peace and prosperity and human dignity.
Finally, we must draw on the strength of our values - for the challenges that we face may have changed, but the things that we believe in must not. That is why we must promote our values by living them at home - which is why I have prohibited torture and will close the prison at Guantanamo Bay. And we must make it clear to every man, woman and child around the world who lives under the dark cloud of tyranny that America will speak out on behalf of their human rights, and tend to the light of freedom, and justice, and opportunity, and respect for the dignity of all peoples. That is who we are. That is the moral source of America's authority.
Since the days of Franklin Roosevelt, and the service and sacrifice of our grandparents, our country has borne a special burden in global affairs. We have spilled American blood in many countries on multiple continents. We have spent our revenue to help others rebuild from rubble and develop their own economies. We have joined with others to develop an architecture of institutions - from the United Nations to NATO to the World Bank - that provide for the common security and prosperity of human beings.
We have not always been thanked for these efforts, and we have at times made mistakes. But more than any other nation, the United States of America has underwritten global security for over six decades - a time that, for all its problems, has seen walls come down, markets open, billions lifted from poverty, unparalleled scientific progress, and advancing frontiers of human liberty.
For unlike the great powers of old, we have not sought world domination. Our union was founded in resistance to oppression. We do not seek to occupy other nations. We will not claim another nation's resources or target other peoples because their faith or ethnicity is different from ours. What we have fought for - and what we continue to fight for - is a better future for our children and grandchildren, and we believe that their lives will be better if other peoples' children and grandchildren can live in freedom and access opportunity.
As a country, we are not as young - and perhaps not as innocent - as we were when Roosevelt was President. Yet we are still heirs to a noble struggle for freedom. Now we must summon all of our might and moral suasion to meet the challenges of a new age.
In the end, our security and leadership does not come solely from the strength of our arms. It derives from our people - from the workers and businesses who will rebuild our economy; from the entrepreneurs and researchers who will pioneer new industries; from the teachers that will educate our children, and the service of those who work in our communities at home; from the diplomats and Peace Corps volunteers who spread hope abroad; and from the men and women in uniform who are part of an unbroken line of sacrifice that has made government of the people, by the people, and for the people a reality on this Earth.
This vast and diverse citizenry will not always agree on every issue - nor should we. But I also know that we, as a country, cannot sustain our leadership nor navigate the momentous challenges of our time if we allow ourselves to be split asunder by the same rancor and cynicism and partisanship that has in recent times poisoned our national discourse.
It is easy to forget that when this war began, we were united - bound together by the fresh memory of a horrific attack, and by the determination to defend our homeland and the values we hold dear. I refuse to accept the notion that we cannot summon that unity again. I believe with every fiber of my being that we - as Americans - can still come together behind a common purpose. For our values are not simply words written into parchment - they are a creed that calls us together, and that has carried us through the darkest of storms as one nation, one people.
America - we are passing through a time of great trial. And the message that we send in the midst of these storms must be clear: that our cause is just, our resolve unwavering. We will go forward with the confidence that right makes might, and with the commitment to forge an America that is safer, a world that is more secure, and a future that represents not the deepest of fears but the highest of hopes. Thank you, God Bless you, God Bless our troops, and may God Bless the United States of America.
