DRAFT/ DRAFT/ DRAFT

Remarks Prepared for Delivery by

Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen

At Commencement Ceremonies for

The Graduating Class of 1998

United States Military Academy

West Point, New York

Saturday, May 30, 1998

Lieutenant General Christman, Mrs. Christman, Secretary Walker, Brigadier General Abizaid, Mrs. Abizaid, Brigadier General Lamkin, Mrs. Lamkin, distinguished graduates, members of the faculty and honored guests, ladies and gentlemen.

Let me thank you for the honor of allowing me to speak at this very special time, as those of you graduating prepare to shift gears along the road you choose to become your life. Beyond a few remarks here today, I’ll try not to delay your trip too long.

It is a tradition on this day to talk of the future, and I will honor that tradition. First, though, I also want to honor a tradition that will absolve some of you from part of your recent past. So by the power vested in me as Secretary of Defense, I hereby grant amnesty to the cadets who are marching tours or serving restrictions or confinements for minor misconduct. Lieutenant General Christman will determine what is minor.

... Shifting now to your future and what’s ahead - this is a great time to address a class of graduates like yours, because, as I look into your eyes I find myself looking at more than just a class of accomplished men and woman. I find myself looking at a map of the next century. You read a lot these days about the millennium, about the great changes to come in technology and global relations.

Much of what you read is abstract, and speculative. But standing here today, you have more control over the destiny of this country and of this world, than all the great writers, and all the writings in all the great libraries of this world. The daily reality of the life you choose, the values you follow, and the goals you set will ultimately brand the great pundits of today as the prophets or the fools of tomorrow.

As men and women of this academy, your responsibility is a heavy one because you are both wielders of a mighty sword and protectors of an endangered peace. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe once wrote ... “He only earns his freedom and existence who daily conquers them anew.” Everything you have learned over your years here at the academy could be summarized in that line. And while you have been trained in the terrible tactics of war, the crowning accomplishment of your lives would be using your skills to keep the peace.

That struggle will always be arduous, because the world will test your abilities in ever changing ways, in ever changing times. It’s often useful to search the past to guide your future, and the past tells you that nothing remains the same for long. This year is an interesting one to set as a benchmark for a quick journey into history. Ten years ago, in the spring of 1988, the visibly crumbling walls of Soviet aggression were still powerful enough to divide Europe - but not for long.

Ten years earlier, in 1978, those walls were strong enough not only to stand firm in Europe but to consider expanding into Afghanistan, as they did a year later.

A decade before that, in the spring of 1968, the walls of Soviet oppression and aggression appeared to show some flexibility, only to rebound with a rigid deadly strike in Czechoslovakia.

Stepping back another twenty years to springtime 1948, Joseph Stalin was strangling the life from Berlin. He might well have succeeded, but for the bravery and skill behind the U.S. military airlift. Bravery and skill then of people like you now.

With all the tumultuous change that defines our past and awaits our future, what then is constant? On the subject of international relations and warfare, the great philosopher Albert Camus, once wrote that ... “the spirit together with the sword will always win over the sword alone.” The United States has invested in you for the prospect of war, asking in return that you keep the peace. It is a great and difficult demand. But it must always remain your guiding spirit. Otherwise, we could never claim to be any different from any other great military force.

The world is more peaceful now than at almost any time this century, but it is no more safe. The nuclear sword of Damocles dangling over our planet, now hangs in a growing rogues gallery where new weapons of mass destruction, proliferating biological and chemical weapons, and increasingly dangerous conventional weapon technology are among the latest aspiring riders of the Apocalypse.

The glaring enemy of the Cold War has given way to multitudes of shrouded threats. In the past, our enemy had an address. Today that enemy can spring from a street corner in the Middle East, from a hillside in Bosnia, or from a subway system here at home. In the past our enemy had a name. Today, our enemy has many names, and many more pseudonyms. In the past, our enemy had a recognizable face. Today, the faces of our enemy are masters of disguise, able to mutate and escape detection like the most virulent virus.

So what do the political and international experts say?

Arthur Schlesinger calls today’s democracies pressure cookers, ready to explode.

Zbigniew Brezinski argues that the future pivots on what he calls the axial super continent of Eurasia.

Veteran George Kennan argues that amid diffusing global authority, many groups outside official and diplomatic channels increasingly represent their nations abroad, for better or worse.

And Samuel Huntington advises us to scale back our involvement in the world until a serious new global threat inspires us to re-engage.

Guides to the future are many, but none are simple, many contradict, and many are plain wrong. To fight effectively enough to keep the peace today, a soldier must know more and think faster than ever before. Writing about the profiles of some of the world’s greatest military leaders, historian John Keegan described supreme military leaders like Alexander the Great and West Point graduate Ulysses Grant as complex combinations of kings and priests, thinkers and doers, diplomats and aggressors. Uniting them all - especially Grant - according to Keegan, was a talent for keen insight into friend and foe alike; understanding both the soldiers under their command and the enemies that they opposed.

To lead effectively in the next century you will need to continue honing your ability in an ever-changing combination of complex skills. To forget that is to risk plunging into what Homer described as the essence of war, something .... “that makes a man go mad for all his goodness of reason, that rage that rises within and swirls like smoke in the heart and becomes in our madness a thing more sweet than dripping of honey.”

History is littered with military leaders who evoked that sort of image and left nothing but tragedy in their wake. In this country, we have always stood for something else, something much more. Standing here today, you are the flesh and blood of the next century. In that century of spiraling technology that will measure the might of the brain ever more heavily against the strength of the arm we must all be able to think as powerfully as we can strike. Writing in the late eighteen hundreds Carl von Clausewitz’ great distinction was that he was both warrior and philosopher. His warning then remains germane today ... that war separated from political dialogue - separated from an ideal - is ... “a senseless thing without an object.”

What then should be our ideal? What should be our object? There is a strong strain of thought in our country that has always shrunk from the great international hurdles. They describe themselves in various ways at different times. But their central message remains the same ... Withdraw. Live among our blessings, hiding behind the great ocean walls that God built along our shores. Let the music of those crashing waves bloc out the dangerous din that thunders beyond them. They would have no use for your skills, until that terrible moment when they had no use for anything else. They can spin a charmed tale. Charmed until you remember the time tested truth of Dante’s warning, that .... “ the hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who in times of moral crisis, preserve their neutrality.”

The converse of neutrality, as Dante saw it, did not always mean war but always meant taking a stand; standing for an ideal. Cadets standing in this very spot a century ago faced a daunting future of radical and in most cases unimaginable change. Fighting the Spanish in 1898, American soldiers took the first step in a long climb that would make the United States the most powerful nation in history.

The world changed along the way. The wagon became a car, the boat became an airplane, and the airplane became a space shuttle. The telegraph became a telephone, and the telephone became the Internet. Young U.S. soldiers fighting Spain in Cuba could scarcely have imagined a modern grenade, and never imagined a nuclear missile. Yet they laid the groundwork for a military establishment that could defend us against both.

But while we remember our success we should never ignore our failure. Mistakes that included avoiding war when we should have waged it, waging war when we should have avoided it, and retreating from the world when we should have engaged it. Those days are gone. But their lessons remain. So let our victories and defeats both guide you and warn you.

Cadets standing in your spot a century from now will note how well you took up your charge today. By then, the car, the boat, the plane, the telephone, and the Internet will have morphed into something much more exiting. U.S. foreign and military policy will operate in a world none of us here now can possibly predict. And yet, it is how you choose to use your life today and each day that follows that will carve out and give shape to that world and decide whether this remains a great country.

We are surrounded by measurements that presume to gauge greatness. Weapons, money, speed of delivery, are a few examples. 30 years ago, Robert Kennedy spoke at the University of Kansas about one of these measurements - Gross National Product, pointing out what GNP can never grasp ... “It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything in short except what makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America ... except why we are proud that we are Americans.”

That is left to you, to build and define. And as you go off today, to give shape to your country and to the future of this world, you’ll find your best measuring stick lives in your own hearts.

Thank you.

- END