[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 49 (Thursday, March 16, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4118-S4119]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


          AMBASSADOR MADELEINE K. ALBRIGHT'S ELOQUENT REMARKS

 Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I rise today to share with my 
colleagues an eloquent speech given by United Nations Ambassador 
Madeline K. Albright at the annual dinner of the national Democratic 
Institute for International Affairs [NDI] on March 1.
  At this dinner, Ambassador Albright and South African First Deputy 
President Thabo Mbeki received W. Averall Harriman Democracy Awards for 
their work promoting democracy and freedom.
  Ambassador Albright spoke persuasively about the need for the United 
States to remain engaged in world affairs. She warned against again 
listening to the ``siren song of isolationism,'' which fooled us during 
the 1920's and 1930's into believing that we could retreat from the 
world around us. As World War II demonstrated, a doctrine that promised 
to put ``America First'' in reality did great damage to our national 
interests.
  I hope my colleagues will find Ambassador Albright's words as 
insightful as I did, and I ask that they be printed in the Record.
  The speech follows:

       Thank you, Senator Dodd. And thank you, Mr. Vice-President, 
     Mr. Deputy President, members of the diplomatic corps, 
     friends and supporters of NDI. This is a great honor, coming 
     as it does from an institution whose birth I witnessed and of 
     which I am very, very proud.
       As Vice Chair of the board in years past, I helped to 
     choose candidates, select recipients and recruit presenters 
     for this award. Last year, I presented it, myself. So I've 
     seen this event from every side, and I can tell you: it may 
     be more blessed to give; but it is definitely more fun to 
     receive.
       The accomplishments of NDI continue to expand. Wherever I 
     have traveled the last two years, it has seemed that NDI 
     either had been there, was there, or was due on the next 
     plane. I have seen its representatives at work in Europe, 
     Africa and Latin America. They have a well-earned reputation 
     for competence, honesty and pragmatism.
       Thanks should go to the leadership and staff here in 
     Washington, from Ken Wollack and Jean Dunn on down, and to 
     the presence of people in the field who are flat out terrific 
     at what they do.
       I am grateful to all of you, and I am doubly pleased to 
     share this night with Deputy President Mbeki. Last year, he 
     became the first representative of a democratic South Africa 
     to address the Security Council. After he spoke, I sat there, 
     as Ambassadors are wont to do, applauding silently.
       What I would like to have done is stand on my chair and 
     shout ``Hallelujah''. For decades at the UN, the very name 
     ``South Africa'' had summoned forth only sanctions and shame. 
     Mr. Mbeki's statement marked its transformation into a symbol 
     of inspiration and hope.
       The new South Africa gives freedom fighters everywhere 
     cause to persist; it reminds all of us that international 
     solidarity does matter: and it provides fresh evidence that 
     human beings, when imbued with courage and sustained by 
     faith, can achieve almost anything.
       We know from history, however, that few victories are 
     permanent. The last day of one struggle is the first day of 
     the next.
       That is true for those from Central America to Central Asia 
     who are trying to make new democracies succeed.
       And it is true for those who believe, as do I, that 
     although the Cold War has ended, America's commitment to 
     freedom around the world must live on.
       Unfortunately, as after other great struggles in our 
     nation's history, some feel that our security has been 
     assured, and urge that we move now from the center stage of 
     international life to a seat somwehere in the mezzanine.
       The new isolationists find their echo in the narrow-
     visioned naysayers of the 1920's and 30's, who rejected the 
     League of Nations, embraced protectionism, downplayed the 
     rise of Hitler, opposed help to the victims of aggression and 
     ultimately endangered our own security--claiming all the 
     while that all they were doing was ``putting America first.''
       Today their battle cry is ``Retreat.'' Their bumper sticker 
     is ``Kill the UN.'' And their philosophy is--``Let the people 
     of the Balkans and other troubled lands slaughter each other, 
     for their anguish is God's problem, not our own.''
       The isolationists were wrong in the 1930's; they are wrong 
     now. They prevailed then; they must fail now. Their view of 
     our national interest is too narrow; their view of history 
     too short; and their sense of public opinion just plain 
     wrong.
       Most Americans understand that what happens in the world 
     affects almost every aspect of our lives. We live in a nation 
     that is democratic, trade-oriented, respectful of the law and 
     possessed of a powerful military whose men and women are 
     precious to us. We will do better and feel safer in an 
     environment where our values are widely shared, markets are 
     open, military clashes are constrained and those who run 
     roughshod over the rights of others are brought to heel.
       Isolationism will do nothing to create such an environment; 
     helping new and emerging democracies will.
       There is no question that the National Endowment for 
     Democracy was one of Ronald Reagan's better ideas. But it was 
     conceived primarily to counter a single virulent ideology. 
     Today, that is no longer sufficient. We build now, not out of 
     fear, but on hope. It is our responsibility, and our 
     opportunity, to lock in the gains yielded by past sacrifice.
       [[Page S4119]] As NDI recognizes, building democracy 
     requires more than distributing copies of the Constitution, 
     or even the entire reading list of the Speaker of the House. 
     Elections are but one vote in the democratic symphony. 
     Democracy requires legal structures that works; political 
     parties that offer a choice; markets that are free; police 
     that serve the people, instead of terrorizing them; and--the 
     O.J. Simpson trial notwithstanding--a press makes its own 
     choices about what is news.
       The leaders of new democracies face challenges that 
     dictators often do not. First, they are accountable; they 
     must respond to public expectations. They must transform 
     economies distorted by decades of centralized planning or 
     graft. They must practice austerity in a setting where long-
     suppressed hopes have been unleashed. They may face 
     overwhelming social, environmental and criminal challenges.
       And they must teach factions that have for years killed 
     each year the satisfaction of out-thinking, out-debating and 
     out-polling each other.
       NDI is part of a global network that is working to help 
     these new leaders succeed. I know from my own experience that 
     this can be exhilarating, but humbling work. For on every 
     continent, there are individuals who know better than most of 
     us the price of repression; those who have risked not job 
     titles and office space by standing up for what they believe, 
     but prison sentences, brutal beatings, torture and death.
       NDI's efforts in support of democracy are reinforced by 
     those of other NGO's, human rights monitors, church groups, 
     regional organizations and increasingly, I am pleased to say, 
     by the United Nations.
       But America belongs at the head of this movement. For 
     freedom is perhaps the clearest expression of national 
     purpose and policy ever adopted--and it is our purpose. Like 
     other profound human aspirations, it can never fully be 
     achieved. It is not a possession; it is a pursuit. It is the 
     star by which America has navigated since before we were a 
     country, and still an idea.
       So, I am proud that this Administration had the guts, the 
     wisdom and the conviction to restore to the people of Haiti 
     the democracy that had been stolen from them; and I am 
     waiting for the day when those who nitpicked and bellyached 
     about that decision will admit they were wrong and the 
     President was right.
       I am proud, also, of our steadfast support for reform and 
     reformers in Central Europe and the former Soviet Union. 
     There, the success or failure of the democratic experiment 
     will do much to determine the kind of world in which our 
     children will live.
       I am committed, as I think all who believe in democracy 
     should be, to the survival in Bosnia of a viable, multi-
     ethnic state.
       And I want the War Crimes Tribunals for Rwanda and former 
     Yugoslavia to establish the truth before the perpetrators of 
     genocide obscure it. These tribunals serve the cause not only 
     of justice, but of peace. For true reconciliation will not be 
     possible in these societies until the perception of 
     collective guilt has been erased, and individual culpability 
     assigned.
       Democratic principles are the best answer there is to the 
     ethnic clashes that have arisen so often and so tragically in 
     recent years.
       As our own history attests, and as the presence of 
     Representative John Lewis here tonight reminds us, a 
     government that allocates the privileges of citizenship 
     according to ethnicity or race invites weakness and risks 
     civil war.
       Nationhood alone is no grounds for pride; nations must be 
     instruments of law, justice, liberty and tolerance. They must 
     be inclusionary, not exclusionary. That is what democracy is: 
     and that is the difference between a true nation, such as 
     South Africa today; and the pariah South Africa of decades 
     past.
       This is a year of anniversaries. The era in which most of 
     us have lived most of our lives began 50 years ago. In recent 
     months, we have been reminded of how much we owe the ``guys 
     named Joe'' who landed on the beaches of Normandy, won the 
     Battle of the Bulge and raised the flag at Iwo Jima.
       Let us never forget the lesson behind those memories. Let 
     us never forget why that war began, how that war was won or 
     what that war was about.
       Aggressors must be resisted. Fascism must never again 
     arise. Intolerance can never again be allowed to hide behind 
     the mask of nationalist pride. And the siren song of 
     isolationism must never again distract us from the 
     responsibilities of leadership.
       History did not end when the Nazis surrendered, or when the 
     Berlin Wall fell or when Boris Yeltsin climbed onto that tank 
     or when Arafat and Rabin shook hands or when Nelson Mandela 
     took the oath of office.
       Each generation is tested. Each must choose: engagement or 
     indifference; tolerance or intolerance; the rule of law or no 
     law at all.
       We have a responsibility in our time, as others have had in 
     theirs, not to be prisoners of history, but to shape it; to 
     build a world not without conflict, but in which conflict is 
     effectively contained; a world, not without repression, but 
     in which the sway of freedom is enlarged; a world not without 
     lawless behavior, but in which the law-abiding are 
     progressively more secure.
       That is our shared task in this new era.
       Thank you very much.
       

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