The United States has both a pragmatic and moral obligation to help eradicate transnational problems like poverty, Stanford alumna Susan E. Rice,’86, argued at a lecture in Cubberley Auditorium last night.

Rice’s lecture, entitled “Public Service in the National and Global Interest: A Call for New Leadership to Meet Twenty-First Century Challenges,” was presented by the Call to Serve Initiative, a recently inaugurated program to familiarize more students with the opportunities available in public service. Rice opened the lecture with a discussion of how she, a Rhodes Scholar who harbored senatorial ambitions during her time at Stanford, became interested in international affairs and changed her career path to become an expert in international relations. She served the Clinton White House as a staffer for the National Security Council, and she eventually served as the assistant secretary of state for African Affairs under Madeleine Albright.

The biographical segment was variously tender and witty. Rice reassured Stanford students that not even the current football season “could compare to Big Game my freshman year,” in which The Play gave the win to Cal. She also described coming back to Stanford as “a sensory experience in so many ways — you get the aroma from the eucalyptus trees, the flight instinct triggered by terrorists on bicycles and the ubiquitous sense of the possible.

“I know it’s hard to appreciate when you’re still here, but I just marked my twentieth reunion, and I can say with confidence that it really doesn’t get better than this,” she remarked. “Enjoy it while it lasts.”

Rice, who is currently a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, went on to deliver a scathing criticism of U.S. foreign policy in the status quo, noting the importance of “changing the tone and nature of U.S. leadership.”

Citing unconstitutional detentions of suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay and the killing of Iraqi civilians as examples, Rice contended that the United States is eroding its moral leadership by hypocritically rejecting its own principles, and that it must win back its authority by extending aid and support to its potential allies.

“If we want others to work with us to counter the gravest threats we face, then we have to be serious about putting resources behind helping to eliminate the threats that are most proximate to other people,” she said.

Rice saw this need for international cooperation as arising partly from the transnational nature of security threats in the twenty-first century.

“The current risks to United States national security extend beyond the handful that are state-based,” she said. “Terrorism, weapons proliferation, civil conflicts, infectious diseases, environmental degradation — all of these are transnational phenomena that have the potential to kill large numbers of Americans, whether swiftly or over long periods of time.”

Yet, she said, the militaristic and self-serving nature of United States foreign policy did little to strengthen the bonds that the U.S. needed with the greater international community.

“The United States does very little to increase goodwill when we are seen to spend four times in each month in Iraq what we spend in an entire year on AIDS,” she said. “Nor do we win hearts and minds while pouring $350 million a year in agriculture subsidies that disenfranchise impoverished farmers internationally, while committing less than one-seventh of that sum to development assistance.

“Internationally, the United States is seen as a selfish and unilateral hegemon,” Rice said. “Never has the support for the United States been so low, yet never has the United States been in more need of broad and generous international support.”

One way in which to achieve this support, according to Rice, is to assist weak and impoverished states on the road to becoming self-sufficient.

“Building the capacity of weak states to be effective partners for their own people and for combating transnational security threats is a central security imperative for the twenty-first century,” she said. “To minimize international antipathy towards the United States and to earn the willing cooperation of others to join with us, we need to be part of an effort to expand the global winners’ circle — the body of people who enjoy the fruits of a cooperative international system, a market-based global economy and greater collective security.”

However, Rice noted that the United States is currently failing to provide adequate humanitarian aid, especially regarding poverty, which, she argued, “plays a complex and dual role in facilitating the emergence and spread of security threats.

“Poverty increases the threat of conflict,” Rice said. “Poverty can also seriously erode state capacities to contain transnational security threats, and thus a downward spiral or extreme doom loop is set in spiral. Discerning and disaggregating this dangerous dynamic is essential to grasping the essential United States national security rationale for eradicating poverty.”

Just as important, said Rice, was the humanitarian argument for combating global poverty.

“Our common humanity, our moral conscience and our national values dictate that we cannot rest while so much needless suffering exists,” Rice stated. “We are at a critical point in our national history, when our values and our interests coincide. Reducing poverty is the right thing to do morally. It is also the right thing to do and the wise thing to do for our national security.”

While Rice noted that making humanitarian aid a priority in U.S. foreign policy would require “a near-tectonic shift” of policy, she ended her lecture on a high note — by encouraging the current generation of Stanford students to enter public service.

“While it will be expensive and perhaps unpopular to do so, Americans will certainly pay more dearly over the long term if our leaders fail to realize the risks and the costs to the United States of persistent global poverty,” Rice said. “This is where you come in — our government sorely needs a new generation of leaders and public servants to meet the challenges.”

Indeed, Rice’s optimism about the future stemmed from her expectations of the younger generation.

“We need those who came of age in the era of globalization, not my generation,” she said. “We need those who are steeped in new geopolitical realities, who are yet hopeful about the future. We need those who see the fundamental consonance between U.S. values and U.S. policies. Most of all, we need those who see that we can and we must do much, much better.

“There is nothing more energizing, in my view, than to help shape U.S. policy, and by extension, the future of the world,” Rice added. “That’s what public servants get to do — they can literally change our country and the world, even if by only small increments, and hopefully for the better.”