Former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft said Friday night that the world has changed in many ways in the past 40 years and that America has to find new techniques to face original challenges.
Scowcroft was keynote speaker at the 40th anniversary gala for the Hinckley Institute of Politics at the University of Utah, where he addressed some 500 guests in the Rice Eccles Stadium tower.
The United States has to relearn to use its power in the newly emerged global environment, said Scowcroft, who was an adviser to presidents Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush.
"We live in a unique time," he said. "Not since the Romans has one country had so much military and economic power. We don't know how to act in this world. . . . Likewise the rest of the world doesn't know how to behave."
In the past, the U.S. has taken a backseat in politics, or gathered nations together to let them solve problems, as it did when it formed NATO and the United Nations, he said. Resentment of its power and disagreement with its policies are now problems America has to face in a global economy where news and information are so readily available.
As capital and information continue to cross borders and pop culture spreads throughout nations, the world will continue to globalize, he said.
The Hinckley Institute was founded in 1965, the same year the Watts racial riots occurred in California and in the midst of the Cold War. It was founded to help students gain internships and to become more involved in the political process. But though many things have changed, including the institute itself in some ways, global politics has not, Scowcroft said.
"We are trying to manage this world with the same principles and institutions that existed 30 years ago," he said. "We spent years focused on one target (during the Cold War.) Now we have thousands of targets. We don't even know where they all are."
Scowcroft earned master's and doctoral degrees in international relations from Columbia University before going into a career in the military, where he served the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He founded The Forum for International Policy. He was opposed to sending troops into Iraq.
He said America now has four major problems to address: Long-term military occupations overseas, terror, weapons of mass destruction and "everything else."
NATO and the U.N. also have to update themselves, along with the U.S., Scowcroft said. But whatever changes, one thing will stay the same.
"What has not changed is the need to know how to think about problems," he said.
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