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Secretary Rumsfeld Remarks at the Fortune Magazine Global Forum
Monday, November 11, 2002
United States Department of Defense

“It is not enough for leaders to judge a mission worthwhile; public support is needed. If public support is weak at the outset, leaders must be willing to invest the time, effort and political capital to marshal support to sustain the effort for whatever period may be required. The risks should be acknowledged at the outset, rather than allowing our people to believe erroneously that an engagement can be undertaken antiseptically, on the cheap, with zero or few casualties.”

No. 576-02
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
The following are as prepared remarks for Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld to the Fortune Magazine Global Forum and are embargoed until 7:15 p.m. EST today:

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Richard Parsons, I thank you for those kind words of introduction.

Before turning to questions, I thought I would discuss some of the fundamental changes affecting the world's security landscape, and offer some thoughts as to how we might best defend ourselves in the new 21st Century security environment.

Today, for most countries, national security and economic security share the important characteristic that interlocking ties of mutual interest bind us together. No company, much less a nation, is truly isolated from others. While every nation is ultimately responsible for defending its own interests, most civilized nations today recognize that the most serious threats to our security affect many nations in similar ways, and that they are best deterred and defended against by working together.

That reality was certainly driven home by the attacks of September 11 -- and by the world's response. Citizens of more than 80 nations died that day. And citizens of every nation saw in an instant that the threat of terrorism is not confined by borders in either its origin or the targets of its deadly acts.

In the global war against terrorism, we have assembled the largest coalition in the history of the world. The scope of this alliance is breathtaking. Some 90 nations -- nearly half the countries on the face of the earth -- are participating. Never before have the interests of civilized nations more clearly overlapped. And never before have the nations of the world so effectively cooperated to defend them.

It is clear that our shared future is evolving international partnerships that reflect the evolving global perils.
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2002 © The United States Department of Defense.

Dan