NATO and the US commitment to Europe - transcript

NATO and the US Commitment to Europe

Postwar America was ready for peace and prosperity. But while the free world was recovering, the nations of Eastern Europe were being "consolidated" behind an Iron Curtain. So began four decades of division in Europe - and 40 long years of suspicion between superpowers.

Today, you graduate the end of an era of conflict - but a contest of a different kind, a cold and abstract war of words and walls. Now Europe and the world have entered a new era, the "age of freedon."

I hope you'll forgive me if I use this great forum at your great university to handle a subject of a very serious nature... I'll be reflecting on the power and potential of democratic change in each of the commencement addresses I make this year. I begin today...with a few words on the changes and America's place in the new Europe.

A few of you may be wondering what a continent 4,000 miles away has to do with you. Throughout our history, great upheavals in Europe have forced the American people to respond, to make deep judgments about the part we should play in European affairs. This had been true from the time of the French Revolution and the wars which followed it; to World War I and the flawed peace which ended it; to the Second World War and the creation of the postwar order. I believe that, now, we are poised at another such moment - a critical time in our strategic relationship with our neighbors across the Atlantic.

Many of the graduates of America's class of 1916 may have wondered why the faraway war making headlines in their newspapers would have anything to do with them. They might have agreed with President Wilson, who that year said, "We are not interested" in the causes of war, in "the obscure foundations from which its stupendous flood has burst forth." But a year later, those classmates - and their country - were swept up in the torrent; carrying them to the horror of the trenches in France.

Yet after the war, we again turned away from active involvement in European affairs. Instead, we sponsored a treaty to outlaw war, and then, as the outlaws gained strenght, the United States passed new neutrality laws. Another generation of Americans sat in the bright sun of commencement ceremonies at colleges across the country, thinking war in Europe would pass them by. But when war came, they paid an awful price for America's isolation.

When that war ended, those students no longer questioned our role in the future of Europe. They no longer asked what Europe had to do with them, because they knew the answer: everything.

About a year ago in Germany, I defined the kind of Europe our country is committed to: a peaceful, stable Europe, a Europe whole and free. Today that goal is within our reach.

A New Age of Freedom

We are entering a new "age of freedom" in a time of uncertainty but great hope. Emerging democracies in Eastern Europe are going through social, political, and economic transformations; shaking loose stagnant, centralized bureaucracies that have smothered initiative for generations.

In this time of transition, moving away from the postwar ear and beyond containment, we cannot know what choices the people of Eastern Europe will make for their future. The process of change in the Soviet Union is also still unfinished. It will be crucial to see, for example, whether Moscow chooses coercion or peaceful dialogue in responding to the aspirations of the Lithuanian people, and [other] nationalities within the Soviet Union. The only noble answer lies in a dialogue that results in unencumbered self-determination for Lithuania.

President Gorbachev has made profound progess in his country; reforms so fundamental that the clock cannot be turned back. Yet, neither can we turn the clock ahead, to know for sure what kind of country the Soviet Union will be in years to come. For the sake of the future was share with Europe, our policies and presence must be appropriate for this period of transition - with a constancy and reliability that will reassure our friends, both old and new.

My European colleagues want the United States to be a part of Europe's future. I believe they are right. The United States should remain a European power in the broadest sense - politically, militarily, and economically. And, as part of our global responsibilities, the foundation for America's peaceful engagement in Europe has been - and will continue to be - NATO.

Recognizing in peace what we had learned from war, we joined with the free nations of Europe to form an Atlantic community, an enduring political compact. Our engagement in Europe has meant that the Europeans accept America as part of their continent's future, taking our interests into account across the board. Our commitment is not just in defense; it must be a well-balanced mix of involvement in all dimensions of European affairs.

Because of our political commitment to peace in Europe, there has not been a war on that continent in 45 years. This "long peace" should be viewed through the long lens of history: Europe has now experienced the longest uninterrupted period of international peace in the recorded history of that continent. The alliance is now ready to build on that historic achievement and define its objectives for the next century. So the alliance must join together to craft a new Western strategy for new and changing times.

COPYRIGHT 1990 U.S. Government Printing Office
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group