printable version'Get out there and renew our country and the world,' McFaul tells graduates
Following is the prepared text of the speech delivered by Michael McFaul on June 16, 2007, at Class Day
Michael McFaul, professor of political science, delivered the Class Day lecture Saturday, June 16.
Thank you, Faris, for that introduction, and thanks to the presidents of the Class of 2007 for inviting me to this special occasion.
As Faris said, my boys were a little disappointed to learn that I'd be giving a speech instead of playing basketball at Maples. You see—and I'm sure you'll find this hard to believe—I actually played college basketball on a national championship team. Of course, there's a small caveat. I played for Oxford University when I was a graduate student there. As an American back in my day, playing varsity basketball at Oxford was a bit like being British and making the varsity cricket team here.
So my boys were bummed that I wouldn't be dunking over the Lopez twins, but they were even more disappointed when I told them that the Stanford Band would not be playing as I ran on out to the court. So maybe for them—they are here today—we could sing a few bars. [Tries to lead audience by humming a few bars from the Band's signature "All Right Now."]
But I didn't come here today to sing or talk about my kids. To the parents in the audience, I came here to talk about your kids and the world they are about to enter. Parents, you have a lot to be proud of today. No one is born a Stanford grad. It took a lot of nurturing to get to this weekend. Reading that extra book at night to your 3-year-old, driving hours on a Saturday to get your fifth grader to soccer tournaments and screaming at your teenager to wake up every morning and get to school—well, it all paid off. Here at Stanford, we've continued this nurturing process for the last four years. I like to think of the Farm as a giant incubator—some call it "the bubble—where we get your daughters and sons ripe and ready for the "real world."
It worked for me. When I came to Stanford as a 17-year-old freshman, I was raw and not ready for prime time. I had never lived anywhere but Montana. I hadn't even set foot in California, let alone a foreign country. For my mother, California was a foreign country, filled with hippies and other strange people. And when I came home for Christmas break with hair down to my shoulders, her worst nightmares about the place were confirmed! I had never met a person with perfect SAT scores; my verbal score was 520. I also had met only one African American in my entire life before moving into Ujamaa my freshman year. And I had never even encountered this phrase, "Asian American," let alone met one. By the way, I later married one. And except maybe for the occasional Canadian tourist I served coffee to at the Ramada Inn in Bozeman, Montana, I had never met someone from another country. Like I said, I was raw.
I left Stanford a different person. By the time I was done, I spoke two foreign languages. I had lived in the Soviet Union, Nigeria and Poland. I came here wanting to practice law and left here wanting to practice diplomacy. (Don't ask how I ended up as a professor—life keeps taking unexpected turns.) So, my time in the bubble changed me. Graduates, I guarantee you that you also will come to remember these last four years as a truly special time in your lives as well. Now, I know some of you will hang on for a while. You will convince your parents that the deputy assistant manager position at the CoHo is a truly unique opportunity to gain real business experience. And look at me: I have moved away from Stanford six times in my life. But I have moved back to Stanford seven times. It's a hard place to give up. But for most of you, the bubble will burst tomorrow, and you will leave Stanford and go out into the "real world."
It hasn't been pretty out there. While you have been living inside the bubble, a lot has been happening—much of it bad—outside of the bubble. Right around the time you got to Stanford, President George W. Bush was outlining a plan for transforming the world. He called it his freedom agenda, a strategy for promoting democracy around the world as a way to make us all safer. So far, the results of this freedom agenda have been few. There have been a few breakthroughs, including the Rose Revolution in Georgia in 2003 and the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2004. And no one misses the Taliban regime in Afghanistan or Saddam Hussein in Iraq. But overall trends are disappointing. In Afghanistan, democracy is barely holding on. In Iraq and Palestine, there's civil war.
Elsewhere in the Middle East, the political renaissance that seemed to be budding around the time of your freshman year is now over. In fact, since you've been here, autocrats—not democrats—have become stronger in Egypt, Iran and Pakistan, as well as in Russia, Zimbabwe and Venezuela. Between your freshman and senior years, over 3,000 American soldiers, roughly 60,000 Iraqis and over 200,000 people in Darfur have died. Al-Qaida has more followers today than in 2003. And America's image abroad has never been lower. For instance, in Egypt—a long-standing American ally—93 percent of the population has an unfavorable opinion of the United States. Add this all up, and you will not be surprised to hear that three-quarters of the American people think that the country is "seriously off on the wrong track."
Some look at these trends and say that our era—or now, I should say, your era—marks the end of the American century, or the end of the so-called "American empire." Others declare that the only way to slow the process of decline is for Americans to stop promoting their values, pull back and focus inward. I disagree. First, an America indifferent to oppression and disengaged from the world neither serves the long-term interests of the American people or the world. Second, the United States and the world have seen other darker times in the past, but have always pulled out of them.
Renewal is not only possible, but probable.
Third, the reason I am so optimistic about our ability for renewal is sitting right here in this pavilion: the women and men of the graduating Class of 2007. Let me briefly explain: On the virtues of democracy, I'm with Winston Churchill, who once said that democracy is a terrible system of government, but better than all others tried. Democracies are better at protecting basic human rights, constraining the power of the state and representing the will of the people.
Democracies tend to provide better lives for their citizens than autocracies. It's no accident that the richest countries in the world today are also the oldest democracies. For every economic miracle under autocracy like China, there is an economic disaster under autocracy like North Korea. On average, democracies grow just as fast as autocracies.
Democracies also don't commit genocide. Democracies also don't starve their people.
And perhaps most important, polls show that most people around the world want democracy. When you hear people talk about why Muslims or Asians are not suited for democracy, it's usually a dictator who is making the argument on behalf of his people. And let me be clear, I am not talking about American democracy. We didn't invent it, and we don't hold a patent on its practice. As British Prime Minister Tony Blair said recently, "There is nothing more ridiculous than the attempt to portray democracy or freedom as somehow Western concepts. … Whoever voted to get rid of democracy, or preferred secret police to freedom of speech? These values are universal." So, I think promoting democracy is the right thing to do. But it's also the pragmatic thing to do.
On this one, I'm with Martin Luther King, who once said, "A threat to justice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Now at the time, King was explaining why he could not sit by idly in Atlanta and not be concerned about injustices in Birmingham. But the same holds true regarding the interconnectedness of all states around the world.
Every enemy of the United States has been a dictatorship. Think about it: Germany, Japan and the Soviet Union in the past, and Iran, Syria and North Korea today. No democracy has ever attacked us, and we have never attacked another democracy. The more democratic countries we have in the world, therefore, the more secure we all will be. Does anyone know how many troops the Canadians have stationed on our border? Does anyone know how many nuclear weapons the French have? Why don't you care? Because you know that there is no credible threat from these democracies or others.
Likewise, the transformation of autocracies into democracies in Germany, Japan, Italy or more recently in Poland, Bulgaria and Serbia changed these countries from foes to friends. Even Russia doesn't threaten us anymore. Remember, Russia remains the only country in the world that can obliterate us overnight. Why don't you lie awake at night worrying about nuclear holocaust today? Because communist dictators no longer rule Russia. And it is no coincidence that U.S.-Russian relations have grown tenser recently as Russia has become more autocratic over the last several years.
Now, I'm not naïve. At times in American history, we have needed autocratic allies. But these autocrats have never been long-term, reliable allies—either because they change their minds quickly or because they fall from power unpredictably. Remember the Shah of Iran? He was a great ally of the United States for 37 years, but a terrible ally that 38th year, when the radical mullahs toppled him from power.
Remember Saddam Hussein? He also was an ally of the United States for a while in the 1980s, until he turned away from us and invaded Kuwait.
Remember the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan? Not exactly students of Thomas Jefferson. They were our allies in fighting the Soviets, but not very useful allies for us when they tried to govern Afghanistan. On the contrary, their failures brought the Taliban to power, who in turn invited al-Qaida to set up shop in Afghanistan. We all know the tragic result of that alliance.
We need to learn from these mistakes. Autocrats are not reliable allies. Democracies are.
So, judging from the history of the 20th century, I believe we have moral and strategic reasons to continue to promote democracy in this century.
In the long run, a democratic Iran will no longer threaten the United States or our allies.
In the long run, more democracy in the Middle East will decrease threats between countries in that region, and thereby reduce the need for American troops to be in the region.
In the long run, democratic development also will provide outlets of political expression for the disenchanted, and thereby reduce the appeal of violent radicals. In democracies, successful candidates have to appeal to voters in the middle to win. Extremists don't succeed. But notice that I have to keep using the phrase "in the long run." Because in the short run, there will be bumps along the way, just as there were in the long and rocky struggle for democracy in the United States and elsewhere.
In the short run, extremists can win first elections and threaten to turn the democratic experiment into "one man, one vote, one time."
In the short run, the introduction of democracy can weaken states and make them more susceptible to attack, either from terrorists or other states.
And even in the long run, the consolidation of democracy will never eliminate all terrorist threats. Timothy McVeigh was an American, born and raised in the oldest democracy in the world. So, to succeed, we need a strategy for promoting democracy that is sustainable in the long run.
Now, for me, there are some obvious elements of a better, more effective strategy. First, military intervention almost never works as a method of promoting democracy. We should avoid it.
Second, it is better to have allies in this project, rather than going it alone. In fact, other established democracies—and not the United States—should take the lead in promoting democracy in some regions in the world.
Third, international norms and multilateral institutions can help the process of democratic development, and not just hinder American actions.
Fourth, more intellectual and financial resources are required. We have to devote as many resources to constructing democratic regimes as we currently devote to destroying autocratic regimes. This year, the Pentagon's budget is over $600 billion. The U.S. budget for democracy promotion is $1.5 billion. But the most important element of a new more effective strategy is that we have to get our own house in order. Americans cannot inspire others to embrace democracy if we ourselves do not continue to perfect our own democracy. We cannot champion human rights in other countries if we do not respect human rights at home and abroad.
It's time to renew the American model. We need to replace the lightbulb and make the United States a "shining beacon on the hill" once again. Now, renewal will not be quick or easy. We're in deep right now. But I'm an optimist, precisely because we are a democracy, and not the Roman Empire, and therefore we have a political system in place that allows for—if not even requires—perpetual renewal. And we've done it before: The graduating Class of 1951 also entered a "real world" that looked a lot worse off than when they came to Stanford in 1947. While they were on campus, the Soviets acquired nuclear weapons, the communists seized power in China, and American troops were fighting in a stalemated war in Korea that looked hopeless and senseless to many Americans back home.
The graduating Class of 1975 also left the Stanford bubble during troubled times. Communism was sweeping through Indochina and southern Africa, skyrocketing oil prices had jolted the American economy into recession, and after Watergate, American democracy was neither healthy nor inspiring. Even on my own graduation day in 1986, the world outside didn't look so rosy when we left the bubble. As a student at the international relations graduation ceremony, I spoke on that day as well, and in that speech—written, by the way, on the first Macintosh computers ever installed in Meyer Library—I lamented that the SALT II arms control treaty between the Soviet Union and the United States was on the skids, the apartheid regime in South Africa had just declared emergency rule, and Washington seemed too confrontational or too indifferent to address either. I was mad.
However, after each of these periods, the United States had found a way to renew itself and become again a force for freedom and justice around the world. In fact, the two big worries that I talked about in my 1986 graduation speech—South African apartheid and Soviet communism—were gone by the time I finished graduate school. And in that same time period, America's image around the world had also changed radically for the good. So, my understanding of history gives me confidence in our capacity for renewal. But so does my sense of the future that comes from teaching here at Stanford University. I've taught enough people in this graduating class to know that they have the smarts, the drive and convictions to turn things around. And I am especially heartened when I see that we have not only Californians, Texans and Montanans graduating tomorrow, but also Afghans, Brazilians, Bulgarians, Egyptians, Indians, Indonesians and Nigerians. That gives me hope.
Look around you. The agents of renewal are right here in our midst. Someone sitting here right now will someday open the first U.S. Embassy in a democratic Iran.
Someone sitting here right now will do for solar panels what Silicon Valley entrepreneurs did for computer chips: make them affordable for millions. And that someone will not only help to slow global warming, but they're going to make a fortune along the way!
Someone sitting here right now will inspire a third-grader in the South Bronx to become the first kid in his neighborhood to win a Nobel Prize in physics.
Someone sitting here right now may well be the prime minister who makes India another "beacon on the hill" and a champion of democracy worldwide for the 21st century, showing the rest of the world how democracy and markets can interact to produce fantastic growth and reduce poverty, while also affirming a cultural identity that has little to do with Hollywood or Oxford.
I'm not a dreamer. I'm not making this up. I know people in this audience right now with aspirations to do all of these things. So, finally, as you go out to renew America and the world, don't forget to keep investing in your own renewal.
First, do something, don't be something. When someone at a cocktail party asks you what you do, don't answer, "I am blah, blah, blah." Instead, think of your work as an action verb.
Second, from time to time, do nothing. Get off the gerbil wheel every now and again. You need some idle time to refocus your energies, figure out your priorities and leave room for the unintended.
Third, embrace uncertainty—or at least get used to it. At the beginning of my senior year, I was totally stressed out about what to do after Stanford. It seemed like this decision was going to determine the rest of my career. It did not. Twenty years later, I'm still trying to figure out what I'm going to do after I leave school.
Fourth, continue to learn. Only a fool thinks that graduation is the end of one's education. And your education at Stanford also shouldn't end tomorrow. As graduates, you now have a stake in and lifelong access to—in my humble opinion—the greatest institution of learning on the planet. Keep tapping into it by interacting in a regular way with the students and professors you have met here over the last four years. Some of my best ideas and opportunities have come from exactly these relationships. In fact, it was because of one former student and friend, Amy Biehl, that I got the chance to be a small part of a big event in history. In 1990, I was living in Moscow, and Amy was working in Washington for a democracy promotion organization called the National Democratic Institute, or NDI. When a delegation from NDI visited Moscow that year, Amy asked them to bring a letter to me—there was no e-mail back then—and encouraged them to hire me as a consultant.
At the time, I was working on a dissertation on Africa, which was long overdue. I was also trying to get an academic job without much success. I went zero for 22 on the job market that year. Nonetheless, because of Amy, I set my dissertation and academic job search aside, starting working for NDI (for free, by the way) and began working with Russian democratic leaders—the people who eventually helped to destroy Soviet communism and ended the Cold War. I've been teaching and writing about democracy and occasionally promoting democracy ever since.
Through her ultimate sacrifice, Amy is now remembered appropriately in South Africa as an agent of national reconciliation for an entire country. But I remember her most as someone who was an agent of change for me personally. So, when you leave the bubble tomorrow: Get out there and renew our country and the world. Continue to invest in your own renewal.
And don't forget to keep connected to, learn from and renew each other.
Thank you, and to members of the Class of 2007, congratulations!