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Welcome to the 58th Annual Conference of the Middle East Institute. My name is David Chambers, director of programs.

Our conference is entitled "The Use and Limits of Power in the Middle East," because that is where roughly half of all US military forces are engaged in some form, as well as other resources. One might say that little has changed in the past year since our last conference – US forces are still in Iraq and Afghanistan – but of course much has changed, both in those two countries, as well as in our own and others.

It is decision time in the US. Four weeks from this day, Americans will vote for the next president of the United States. Less than a week from now, Afghans will vote for their president. By early 2005, not only Iraqis but Saudis are slated for their first elections in decades.

As we set out to examine various uses of power – and not just their application in the Middle East but their very applicability and appropriateness – I would like to recall a speech by an American president of the last century (and I must thank Karl Meyer for citing this speech in his most excellent book published earlier this year, The Dust of Empires):

We must face up to the chance of war, if we are to maintain the peace. We must work with certain countries lacking in freedom in order to strengthen the cause of freedom… And as the most powerful defender of freedom on earth, we find ourselves unable to escape the responsibilities of freedom, and yet unable to exercise it without restraints imposed by the very freedoms we seek to protect:

- We cannot, as a free nation, compete with our adversaries in tactics of terror, assassination, false promises, counterfeit mobs and crises.

- We cannot, under the scrutiny of a free press and public, tell different stories to different audiences, foreign and domestic, friendly and hostile.

- We cannot abandon the slow processes of consulting with our allies to match the swift expediencies of those who merely dictate to their satellites.

- We can neither abandon nor control the international organization in which we now cast less than 1 percent of the vote in the General Assembly.

We possess weapons of tremendous power - but they are least effective in combating the weapons most often used by freedom's foes: subversion, infiltration, guerrilla warfare, civil disorder... In short, we must face problems which do not lend themselves to easy or quick or permanent solutions. And we must face the fact that the United States is neither omnipotent nor omniscient - that we are only 6 percent of the world's population – that we cannot impose our will upon the other 94 percent of mankind – that we cannot right every wrong or reverse each adversity – and that therefore there cannot be an American solution to every world problem.

These are words from a speech by President John F. Kennedy at the University of Washington on November 16, 1961. While much may have changed over the past year, as I noted earlier, perhaps all too little has changed over the past four decades in terms of the challenges which face our country – no matter who the challenger. How do we deal with terror – particularly when, as President Kennedy noted, our own “weapons of tremendous power” are “least effective in combating infiltration, guerrilla warfare, and civil disorder”? How do we address multiple audiences in an age of global and now instantaneously televised events? How do we as a free nation react to the expediencies of terrorism and yet foster freedom among others? How do we act as a nation and yet as a member of international bodies such as the United Nations?

We endeavor to address these questions with our panels and seek insight from our keynote and banquet speakers, Secretaries Albright and Lehman.

And so, again, we welcome you here today and encourage your participation.