Condoleezza Rice and Henry Kissinger chat at the World

Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Jan. 23.

Financial Times Deutschland, Germany

Condoleezza Rice: ‘Naive’ American

“God has a special providence for fools, drunks and the United States of America.”

-- Condoleezza Rice, quoting former German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck

Translated By James Jacobson

By Andreas Theyssen

January 23, 2007

Germany - Financial Times Deutschland - Original Article (German)

DAVOS: U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice startled at the World Economic Forum in Davos with a special request - a plea for more optimism.

What do Americans do if they want to avoid being considered naive? They say that Americans are glad to be thought naive. And if an American says the words “Old Europe,” he strives to deliver a quote from Bismarck  just to back up this point.

[In her speech, Rice quoted Bismarck as saying, “God has a special providence for fools, drunks and the United States of America.” WATCH ]

That is exactly what U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice did at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday night. Justifiably so. In view of the crises in Kenya, Pakistan, Iraq and on the financial markets, she said that there is a “need for optimism” so that all of these crises could be overcome. For without optimism and confidence they cannot be. Indeed, at first, this does sound pretty naive.

In diplomacy, says Rice, it’s simply not sufficient to act merely within the framework of the possible. One must go beyond the possible, as her mentor Henry Kissinger did as Richard Nixon’s legendary Secretary of State when relations with the People’s Republic of China were normalized in the early 1970s. So she comes to the conclusion that every challenge can be overcome, as long as one approaches it with optimism and confidence - an essential feature of U.S. policy.

This sounded naive until Rice began to enumerate cases where Americans believe optimism has changed the world. The United States is “on speaking terms” with its former enemies in Vietnam, as well as with former terrorist-sponsors in Libya. Japan, its once fearsome enemy in the Pacific, is today America’s great democratic stabilizer in East Asia. All of this was possible only because the United States has, “no permanent enemies, because we harbor no permanent hatreds.”

Condoleezza Rice doesn’t even deny that this optimism is a trait of America’s starry-eyed, imperialist idealism. It lies in the very nature of the United States, this quest for peace, freedom and free trade - not only on its own territory, but on that of other states as well. It certainly makes mistakes, and for other nations this can occasionally be tiresome. But the nations of the world have to deal with it because American ideals, as Condoleezza Rice says, “make us somewhat impatient.”

What is the long-standing motto of the World Economic Forum? “A Commitment to improving the state of the world.”

This everyone must contribute to in their own way.

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