SECRETARY KERRY: Well, let me take – I’ve got three, and they’re really – and I’ll
try to be very quick.
Joe Nye’s question – will we remain united?
The answer is absolutely, positively, unequivocally.
We are united; we will remain united.
We have had discussions, as all you know, about sanctions – which sanctions to use,
when to apply them, which sector first, at what rate.
And we have absolutely remained united even with those discussions.
The discussion taking place today is absolutely no different.
And it’s sort of tactical.
It is not strategic.
On the fundamental goal with respect to Ukraine, we are absolutely united.
We all agree on the goal.
We want a diplomatic solution.
We are working together on this process.
And we agree on the outlines of exactly what that outcome should be with Minsk, with international
border recognized, with heavy weapons being withdrawn, and so forth.
So I don’t want anybody thinking for an instant – because there isn’t – a potential
of any division here over what must be done and what we will do about Ukraine.
With respect to the veto, it’s a very legitimate question.
And we have discussed it, and we are discussing it, and we’re looking at it.
It’s fraught with the question of how do you do it and what do you get selective about
with respect to one exemption or another exemption.
But there is no question that we are all agonizing over this frustration about mass human catastrophe
that is not responded to by the United Nations writ large, all of us, because of the potential
for a proxy or some other alliance to present a veto.
And it deserves full consideration, and we are providing that consideration now.
With respect to the strategic patience, there really isn’t – I mean, there is, again,
no difference.
Everybody understands what strategic patience is.
We’re living in a much more complicated world.
The bipolar divisions of the Cold War were really simple compared to what we’re facing
today.
With the fall of the Berlin Wall, with the forces that were released in that period of
time, with the sectarianism that has grown, with the mistakes that were made, frankly,
in Iraq in the last decade, it has created an unleashing of forces that had been contained
for some period of time.
But there’s also other forces being released – the questions of opportunity, of corruption,
of sectarian division, of governance, absence of governance, inadequacy of governance, and
challenges, obviously, of leadership.
Those have contributed to this intensity that people feel in certain places.
But I believe that the global community is now beginning to understand and interpret
much more effectively and with a better sense of direction exactly what we need to do together
to respond to these things.
And I’m convinced that this time is going to produce what we need.
The – even Henry Kissinger has said that this is a very different time with a different
set of choices from those that we were presented in the context of East-West and the bipolar
divisions of most of the 50, 60 years that defined the post-Cold War period.
So if we respond correctly as I said, we will get this right.
And it will take strategic patience in order to do what we need to do.