Kerry's speech and a luncheon at Indiana University today
Kerry gave a foreign policy speech at IU today that is really good. It along with toasts at a luncheon with people such as Dick Lugar and Lee Hamilton really show how completely committed, engaged and well suited to be Secretary of State he is.
From the luncheon after the speech:
SENATOR LUGAR: It’s my privilege to initiate by giving a toast to a very, very dear friend. I have been deeply moved today by the comments that he made but impressed by, once again, the comprehensive nature of his leadership in the foreign policy of our country. This is a man who volunteered for military service, who obtained, or sadly, suffered through three Purple Heart situations in the course of that service. He is a person of courage as he came back from that military service and then talked to the nation, as well as to the Congress, as a young person.
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MR HAMILTON: Welcome, good afternoon to all of you. My guess is that you will remember this day for many, many years to come. It’s a memorable day for Indiana University, and Secretary Kerry, that was one heck of a speech you gave. (Applause.)
Secretary Kerry is willing to go anywhere, anytime, and meet with anyone in pursuit of a more peaceful world. He deals with a world that is a tangled mess. Crises cascade and converge upon us in nearly every part of the globe. Instability and threats to our security and interests abound. The number of highly complex foreign policy challenges, which he set out for so magnificently and eloquently just a few minutes ago, is simply staggering. In response to these challenges, Secretary Kerry brings his formidable advocacy skills, as you saw, and negotiation skills that are deep and have a profound understanding of America’s role in the world and the role of American diplomacy in pursuing our national interests.
http://www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2015/10/248254.htm
His speech at the opening of their new international relations building is as Hamilton said - one heck of a speech. While this speaks of many foreign policy issues, here is what he said of climate change.
To be honest, when I became Secretary of State, I was told that climate change was not likely to be a promising area for diplomacy. And China was a big part of the reason, because we had been completely opposed to each other at the last global meeting on climate in Copenhagen, and China was leading the charge of 77 nations to say your responsibility, not ours. China and the United States are now the two largest emitters of greenhouse gases in the world, just shy of 50 percent of all the gases. But earlier efforts at cooperation were nonstarters.
So shortly after I was sworn in in that February date that the president mentioned, I think I went to China in late March, early April. And I had called them two weeks earlier, called my counterpart and said, “Look, here’s what we need to do. We need to come together. We’ve got to find a way to work on this. And when I come, I have a plan. We’re going to lay it down, and let’s see if we can do this.” I proposed the start of regular, formal discussions with China that could break down the barriers and begin to build up our capacity to work together, and laid out every aspect of the issue in a systematic way.
Last fall, I visited – I invited the Chinese state councilor to my hometown of Boston to talk about what more our nations could do together in order to tackle the problem. And then in January, after we’d laid the groundwork, President Obama went to Beijing for further talks. The result was a spectacle that few expected: The American and Chinese presidents standing side-by-side in the Great Hall in Beijing to announce their nations’ respective – their agreement to announce their nations’ respective greenhouse gas emissions targets for the years to come.
The substance mattered. It was a dramatic moment of transformation, where China and the United States joined together, and it took away the excuse from less-developed countries. And the symbolic breakthrough of this coordination was bigger than many of us maybe even anticipated. Since then, every major economy in the world and 150 nations have come forward with their own set of targets or, in the case of India, unveiled a plan to make massive new investments in alternative energy.
http://www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2015/10/248257.htm