FACE THE NATION

Interview with National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice

July 29, 2001

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SCHIEFFER: Good morning, again. And we welcome now the national security advisor, Condoleezza Rice, her first appearance on Face the Nation.

Ms. Rice, let's start right with it. You are just back from Moscow. Secretary of State Powell has been in China. Do you feel you have made any headway in convincing either of the leaders of these two countries about America's case for building an anti-missile defense system?

CONDOLEEZZA RICE, National Security Adviser: I think we are making progress, particularly with the Russians, who are, after all, our partners in the ABM Treaty. And we've made the case to the Russians that it's time to move beyond the treaty to something that's more appropriate to the post-Cold War era.

And missile defense is a part of a larger framework that the president is presenting, with the lower offensive numbers, with non-proliferation efforts. And we're going to begin now on a very intensive set of discussions with the Russians about how to get this done.

I think we're quite a long way from where we were in January, if you look at the statement that President Putin and President Bush put out out of Genoa. It clearly talked about a framework in which we would talk about both offense and defense. That's a step forward.

With China, it's very clear that we do need to intensify our consultations with the Chinese, largely because of the EP-3 incident. At about the time that we were going out for broader consultations, we didn't engage the Chinese at the level we would have liked to have. So I think we will begin to do that now.

SCHIEFFER: When you say the EP-3, you mean the spy plane incident?

RICE: That's right, that's right.

SCHIEFFER: Let me ask you this. You say that you plan to replace the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. What will we do? Will we formally withdraw from the treaty? And what will you put in its place?

RICE: Well, we're open as to form right now. We do know that we need to do something else. This treaty is very restrictive. We cannot test properly under the constraints of this treaty, and we really do believe that it is the wrong basis for a cooperative U.S.-Russian relationship, since it was a treaty based on the hostility of the Soviet Union and the United States.

But we're open as to form. We will talk with our allies. We will talk with the Congress. We will talk with the Russians about how to do this.

SCHIEFFER: Let me just ask one other question, because I want to clear up something. One of the things that you said during your news conference after your meeting with President Putin, you said, we are not prepared now to get involved in, quote, "the kind of tortured arms control talks that occurred in the past over numbers of strategic weapons."

Are you saying now that the number of weapons in the arsenals no longer matters?

RICE: Not at all. The president has made clear, President Bush, that he wants to reduce the number of American offensive arms. And President Putin has said that he wants to reduce Russian arms.

But what we don't need is to count every warhead and to try to match our arsenals exactly. We don't need to cross every "t" and dot every "i" in the way that we did in negotiations that took 11, 12 years. It's a different era. We can have different kinds of discussions about this.

SCHIEFFER: Well, can I just ask you why?

RICE: Because we are not locked now in a relationship in which the only thing that we and the Soviet Union had in common was to keep from annihilating one another. This is a different relationship with Russia. The process by which we get to security forces that do in fact secure us ought to be a different process.

GLORIA BORGER, U.S. News & World Report: So you say you're open to form on this. Tell us, if you got your wish, what form would it be then, if you're not counting every missile, OK?

RICE: Well, I think that we really believe that the United States and Russia ought to talk together about what we each believe is necessary to secure us. We may not need to have exactly the same number of offensive warheads. We may not have exactly the same profile of what kinds of missile defenses we may wish to deploy.

The arms control treaties of the 1970s and 1980s came out of a peculiar, abnormal relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union. It really is the case that almost everything else was a zero-sum game. We had very little with which to cooperate with the Soviet Union.

That is not true with Russia. Russia is not a strategic adversary of the United States. We're not enemies. So the process can look different. We're cooperating in the Balkans. We're cooperating on Nagorno-Karabakh. That would have been absolutely inconceivable with the Soviet Union. So I think we're looking to a different kind of security relationship.

BORGER: Let's talk about China for a moment. The United States believes that the Chinese are still selling missiles to countries like Pakistan. You've tried to tell them to stop, that they're in violation of some treaties. How are we going to hold them accountable for these sales?
RICE: The first step is to get into a forum where we can actually talk about the violations that we see. And Secretary Powell managed to re-establish with the Chinese the need for expert-level talks, so that we can actually discuss the cases, discuss the problems that we see.

Ultimately, if China is transferring weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them to countries that are not responsible, or to countries that are security risks, I think that we're not going to have the kind of U.S.-China relationship that everybody would like to have.

We have a stake in the tremendous transformation that is going on in the Chinese economy. That's why we want to have trade with China, why we want them in the WTO. But we also have a tremendous stake in China playing a responsible part in international politics.

BORGER: But isn't it true that there's not a lot you can actually do?

RICE: I think that for China, which is trying to realize its potential in the international system, a good relationship with the United States is crucial to doing that. And there will not be the full development of the potential in U.S.-China relations if China continues to behave in this way.

No one needs to spell out what means one might take under certain circumstances. The Chinese understand that we have very serious concerns about proliferation. I think that's why they've agreed to begin expert-level talks.

I think we can do this in a cooperative way, because China should also have no interest in having the spread of these technologies into unstable places. I think we have a basis for a good discussion here, and we ought to get about it.

SCHIEFFER: Ms. Rice, the New York Times in an editorial this morning, makes the point that the United States just seems to be either withdrawing or showing no interest in any number of treaties that have been negotiated in recent years: the Kyoto Treaty, the ABM Treaty, watering down the U.N. agreement to resolve illegal trafficking in drugs, the non-proliferation treaty.

Are you concerned that this is going to leave the United States looking as if it is somehow contemptuous of the work that has gone before? And that we're somehow sort of an isolationist country now that's willing to go it alone no matter what the other countries of the world think?

RICE: You will not find a more internationalist administration than this administration. We've been engaged with our partners in the Western Hemisphere. We're engaged with the Europeans in the Balkans. We're engaged with the Russians in trying to come to a new framework for security which is much needed in the world.

But if internationalism somehow becomes defined is as signing on to bad treaties just to say that you've signed a treaty, that's not going to be sustainable with the American people. The president of the United States was not elected to sign treaties that are not in America's interest, that are not going to deal with the problems with which they purport to deal.
And so what we would like to do is to, on these very important problems - and we share concerns about all of these problems - is to put forth new ideas, to work with our allies and friends on things that both will support U.S. interests and that can deal with the problem.

Some of these treaties were not even supported by the Clinton administration. It was a rather peculiar thing to sign the treaty on the international criminal court. But to say forthrightly, you could never submit it to Congress because it would not be ratified.

The Bush administration has taken a different tact, which is that we are going to be honest with our allies about which treaties are in our interests and are dealing with the problems with which they purport to deal. And those that are not, we are not prepared to be party to.

SCHIEFFER: But do you worry that perhaps we're creating the impression that we simply want to go it alone?

RICE: I think if you are in these meetings with President Bush and his counterparts around the world, they understand that we believe that we can be a good partner for our allies and friends. And indeed, even with the Russians, where we're trying to forge a new relationship, we're talking about things that are really important to our interests and to Russian national interest.

This is going to be an engaged, internationalist administration, but it will not be an administration that signs on to treaties that are not in America's interest.

SCHIEFFER: Quick, final one, Gloria.

BORGER: Very quickly, did Colin Powell pledge to the Chinese that the United States is not going to share missile defense with Taiwan?

RICE: Colin Powell had a general discussion with the Chinese of the same kind that we've had with numerous states around the world, explaining the concept, talking about why we need to move forward, and saying that we did not see this as a threat to China.

Anyone who does not wish to blackmail the United States should not see missile defense as a threat to them. And we believe that the Chinese do not want to blackmail us; therefore, they should not see this as a threat.

We will intensify our discussions. But President Bush has made very clear that our commitments to Taiwan under the Taiwan Relations Act remain unchanged. In fact, he takes them very seriously even as we look for a very good relationship with China.

BORGER: So, is that a yes or a no?

RICE: With China, I think we have been very clear. We have obligations under the Taiwan Relations Act to help Taiwan defend itself. Much depends on what the Chinese do in the region. China must adopt a strategy in the region that is not threatening to the interests of the United States or to other states in the region.

SCHIEFFER: Condoleezza Rice, thank you so much for joining us.

RICE: Thank you.

SCHIEFFER: When we come back, we're going to turn to that other story, the missing intern, in just a minute.

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