America and the world

Thank you, Professor Evert and Rector Susi for your invitation and welcome here to Concordia University. This is my first visit to an institution of higher learning in Estonia. I believe this is an appropriate venue for my first visit, given the international nature of the student body and faculty here. I am particularly honored to be the first of several of my fellow ambassadors to address this particular forum. This will certainly give the audience the assurance that all the succeeding lectures will be an improvement on the first.

The theme I have chosen for my brief remarks today is "America and the world in the twenty-first century." Given the modesty of the topic, I am sure we will have ample time to cover it in full and still have plenty of room for questions and answers.

Despite the events of September 11 and its aftermath, the world is a vastly superior place in 2002 than when I entered the university in 1969. America was also at war in that year. It was a war that was sending home in body bags more than 100 Americans every week. Far worse, it was a war that caused many in the world - including many Americans - to question the justice of America's role in the world.

During that period, Europe was inflexibly divided between two ideologies and alliances. The United States and the Soviet Union were at the high-point of an arms race that expended over 5 trillion dollars on each side, and left us both with the capability to utterly annihilate one another. At times I remind myself that in 1969 I would never have been granted permission to see Tallinn. Moreover, if World War III had broken out, it would have been American nuclear weapons that would have brought utter destruction to the beautiful city in which I now live.

I have no nostalgia for the world of my youth. I am grateful for the wisdom and perseverance of the western leaders who came before me that brought a successful end to the cold war and which led to the world we now have.

That said, the world of the year 2002 has its own challenges and a plethora of nearly unbounded opportunities. I believe my country has an important role both in meeting challenges and in making a better world, but I want to emphasize that it is a country that is very much a part of the world. The cartoon image of a unilateral America is a very two dimensional caricature.

Today I want to talk briefly about only a few topics that make up the full picture of America in the world in this new century. Those topics are the war on terrorism, the intersection between economic and political freedom and terrorism, and finally I will make a few remarks about why you should not believe the newspapers and press on U.S.- European relations.

The America of February 2002 is a qualitatively different place than that of September 10, 2001. Television provided the world with an instant visual connection with the events in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania on September 11, but they cannot provide you with the emotional sense of what it was like to be an American in the United States on that day. Surely, it was a terrifying day. I was in Washington. But, it was also a day that immediately crystallized a fundamental reaction in the American population. I can remember my own reaction. I was terribly frustrated, because I had not yet been confirmed for my new position here in Estonia. My country had just been attacked by forces unknown, yet I was unable to go to my position to defend her.

As a palliative, my wife and I went to our local hospital to donate blood. We were turned away. There were so many people lined up to donate blood, to volunteer, to do anything that it would have taken us days just to get into the hospital. Still frustrated, I went home and rewrote my confirmation statement for the senate. I can remember the words that I wrote that day with total clarity. "I ask this committee for the honor of taking my place one more time in the line of battle to defend this country."

When it became clear to us who was responsible for the atrocities of September 11, the resolve of the American people became, if anything, clearer. We faced an enemy who did not oppose us for our policies who was not trying to amend our actions, who did not even want to rule us. We faced an enemy who hated us for what and who we are.

He did not want to rule us, he wanted to destroy us and everything we believe in. He used the very freedoms we cherish to come to our country to kill us. He made no distinction between civilian and military. Indeed he made our civilians part of the very weapon he used to kill us. He even did not distinguish between American victims he claims to have been seeking to kill and others. Citizens of 80 countries died in the September 11 attacks. Many of them were the Muslims our enemy claimed to represent. The American people as a whole recognized that we were a people fighting for our lives.

I have gone on too long about this, but I believe it is at the heart of some of the misunderstandings we see in the newspapers in parts of Europe this week. The events of September 11 unleashed a powerful wave of patriotic sentiment in the United States.

I say only partly in jest that if we had learned that men from Mars had perpetrated the September 11 attacks the American people would go to Mars to find them even if they had to leave their leaders behind and had to walk all the way to get there.

If there is something good about the horror of that day, though, it was the discovery - no the rediscovery - that we would not have to make such a journey alone. Our allies in Europe and all over the world stood up for us. They did so with a truly gratifying rapidity. My wife and I are both European affairs specialists. Yet, when we learned that all our NATO allies had stood up and announced that the attack on the United States was an attack on them all we both literally looked up in wonder. You cannot imagine the impact that act had on the leadership of the United States.

The discussion in the past few days about NATO's supposed irrelevance is so utterly off the mark that I cannot begin to try to correct it.

People are quite concerned about the next phase of the war on terrorism. I have no insider knowledge about that next phase. I only am certain that we are only in the first phase of a long, difficult campaign to rid the world of a threat it can no longer tolerate. Global terrorism has demonstrated an unlimited appetite for inflicting mass casualties. It has shown it has no restraints on whom or where it strikes. It has shown incredible ingenuity in techniques and planning. We cannot afford to wait until it has even more horrible means at its disposal. We must continue to seize the initiative.

And, it is just in this point that I want to stop and emphasize the inescapability of joint action. There can be no question about a unilateral U.S. war on terrorism. How can the U.S. act unilaterally against a force with cells in the U.S. and dozens of countries? The U.S. can use its unique capabilities, information, and influence to point the way. The extraordinary military capabilities we unveiled in Afghanistan can be of use in particular (and probably quite rare) situations, but it will take a major effort all over the world to root out this menace. We can be grateful that this effort is already underway.

As important as it is, American's role in the world will not -- indeed cannot -- be limited to the war on terrorism. Since 1990, unprecedented opportunities have opened to the western world. Nowhere is this clearer than in this country. We have an opportunity to make permanent the victory of economic and political freedom in the world. The twentieth century saw an unprecedented experiment by the human race in a huge variety of forms of economic and political governance. The returns are in on the experiment. Nations with governments accountable to their people, with economies that are open to free choice and to competition and innovation, that have transparent and honest ways of making political and economic choices prosper. Those that do not, fail at even the most basic levels. Starvation is the most basic of those measurements. Is it really any coincidence that the two most needy peoples on earth lived in the Taliban's Afghanistan and Kim Jong Il's north Korea?

This transparent conclusion of the twentieth century, however, is still not unchallenged -- even here in Europe. It seems to me, therefore, that a great task for all of us in the coming years is to bring the influence and the resources of the U.S. and Europe to bear on this matter. It is not enough to defend states against terrorists. It is equally important to support the economic and political developments that sweep terrorists away.

It is in this great task that the U.S. and Europe are uniquely qualified to cooperate. Between us we have the majority of economic resources in the world. We represent democratic nations with free economies. We can and should act jointly to ensure the positive trends of the last 12 years are not reversed by leaders who will not leave and special economic interests that refuse to compete.

I started my first European assignment as a diplomat in 1979. In that year -- and at numerous intervals since then -- I have read press reports in the U.S. and Europe about the impending collapse of the U.S.-European partnership. In the 22 years I have followed this discussion, I have detected only two basic arguments on each side of the Atlantic. On this side of the ocean, the first one is the "the Americans are too pushy, too unilateral, and too powerful. They are trying to drag we Europeans into their fights. NATO is therefore irrelevant." The second one is "the Americans are weakening and silent. They are unwilling to lead. NATO is therefore doomed."

On the U.S. side the arguments are: "the Europeans are too weak and unwilling to bear their share of the burden. Therefore, we Americans are on our own." The second is, "the Europeans are getting too strong and want to shove us out of leadership." I have always found it particularly fascinating when all four arguments run simultaneously, sometimes even from the same commentator in the same presentation. But, take it from me who has watched the merry-go-round spin for more than 20 years. The reports of a U.S.-European divorce will grace the newspapers for far longer than I will be in this business, and they will still be wrong.

There are real issues that are ripe for transatlantic discussion. It is true there is a widening gap in military capabilities between the U.S. and Europe. No one is more concerned about this than the American military. I hope in the coming years this topic becomes one less tossed about in over simplistic press pieces and more often discussed in defense ministries and parliaments.

It is also true that Europe has come a long way since 1949. Something new and important is evolving in the European Union. The coming years will include a legitimate debate over the European security identity. No one will welcome a having a stronger, more effective partner more than will the United States.

Indeed, that is the fundamental mistake commentators who predict the collapse of the U.S. European partnership make.

They mistake the details at the edge of the partnership for its core. They keep trying to measure the situation on the basis of which partner is "ahead". When the U.S. committed itself to Europe in 1949, it went into with the objective creating a strong, equal European partner to help preserve liberty. The strongest advocates of a stronger, more unified Europe have as often been American as European.

We also cannot measure the partnership by which country committed more airplanes to Afghanistan. We cannot measure it by which side holds which high title in which international operation. We cannot even measure it by which side wins one of our trade disputes.

This is a partnership that time and again has shown its strength when one side or the other was most challenged.

The roots of our partnership lie in a century of shared sacrifice in defense of independence and liberty. (My grandfather lost the use of his legs in the service of his country in World War I. The man who's name I bear is buried in a military cemetery in Belgium.) They run through the middle of Berlin where a wall once stood. Now those roots run to a site in lower Manhattan in New York City where we were reminded again of our need to stand together. Against those who cannot tolerate our freedom.

I have spoken far too long. I thank you once again for your invitation and more for your attention.