A New Course in the World, a New Approach at the U.N.

Remarks as delivered by Amb. Susan E. Rice, U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations, at New York University's Center for Global Affairs and Center on International Cooperation.

BY SUSAN E. RICE | AUGUST 13, 2009

Thank you, Bruce, for that incredibly kind introduction. I don't think it gets any nicer than that, so I am very grateful. I am also very grateful to Lynne Brown for all her work to pull this event together and to Bruce and Vera Jelinek for their warm welcome here at NYU. And I'm also pleased to see so many friends and colleagues here in the audience, including the distinguished former President of NYU, Congressman John Brademas.

I'm frankly delighted to be at this marvelous institution, because NYU, despite what Vera says, reaches today far beyond New York City. Yours is truly a global institution, with campuses from Accra to Abu Dhabi. NYU's Centers for Global Affairs and International Cooperation are doing pioneering work in international relations, which is a tribute to the cutting-edge scholarship of its faculty, staff, and students, under the able leadership of Bruce and Vera. These Centers, as many of you well know, are major contributors to the intellectual life of the United Nations.

Your innovative contributions are especially valuable at the start of this new century, at a time when the world is morphing by the minute. As you and others in the academy seek more certain paths across a rapidly shifting global landscape, we too in the U.S. Government are reshaping and renewing American leadership for a very different era.

Six months into the new Administration, as we look ahead to the opening of the 64th General Assembly next month, many of my colleagues on the President's national security team have been outlining how their departments and organizations are implementing the President's national security strategy. Secretary of State Clinton recently explained the ways that our diplomacy furthers U.S. interests by building new partnerships, promoting universally held values, and reinforcing the power of our example. Secretary of Defense Gates is reorienting our armed forces for the unconventional, irregular conflicts of the 21st century.

Secretary of Homeland Security Napolitano recently highlighted the local, state, federal and international partnerships that we need to keep America secure from catastrophic terrorism. John Brennan, the President's principal advisor on counterterrorism, just last week detailed our new approach to safeguarding the American people from the evolving threat of al-Qaeda and other violent extremists. And General Jones, the President's National Security Advisor, explained how the Administration will tackle transnational challenges through a newly integrated National Security Staff at the White House.

 

Amb. Susan E. Rice is the U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations.