[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: George H. W. Bush (1992-1993, Book II)]
[September 21, 1992]
[Pages 1598-1603]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Address to the United Nations General Assembly in New York City
September 21, 1992

    Thank you, Mr. President, to you, sir, and Mr. Secretary-General and 
distinguished guests. Forty-seven years ago, I was a young man of 21, 
and like thousands of others of my generation, I'd gone off to war to 
help keep freedom alive. But 47 years ago this month, the war was 
finally over, and I was looking forward to peace and the chance to begin 
my life in earnest. Nineteen forty-five, it marked a moment of promise, 
not just for me but for all of mankind. A great struggle against 
dictatorship had been fought and won. Across the globe we all looked 
forward to a future free of war, a world where we might raise our 
children in peace and freedom. And this institution, the United Nations, 
born amidst the ashes of war, embodied those hopes and dreams like no 
other.
    But the hopes and dreams of 1945 remained unfulfilled. Communist 
imperialism divided the world in two; our hopes for peace and our dreams 
of freedom were frozen in the grip of cold war. And instead of finding a 
common ground, we found ourselves at ground zero. Instead of living on 
Churchill's ``broad, sunlit uplands,'' millions found that there was, as 
Arthur Koestler so chillingly wrote, ``darkness at noon.'' And instead 
of uniting the nations, this body became a forum for distrust and 
division among nations. And in a cruel irony, the United Nations, 
created to free the world of conflict, became itself conflict's captive.
    I, too, lived through those disputes. I sat where you sit, proudly 
so, served in this Assembly. I saw in my time the consequences of the 
cold war's hot words on the higher missions of the United Nations. And 
now 47 years later, we stand at the end of another war, the cold war, 
and our hopes and dreams have awakened again.
    Driven by its own internal contradictions and banished by the 
people's undying thirst for freedom, imperial communism has collapsed in 
its birthplace. Today, Russia has awakened, democratic, independent, and 
free. The Baltic States are free, and so too are Ukraine and Armenia and 
Belarus and Kazakhstan and the other independent states, joining the 
nations of Central and Eastern Europe in freedom.
    The fear of nuclear Armageddon between the superpowers has vanished. 
We are proud to have done our part to ensure that our schoolchildren do 
not have to practice hiding under their desks for fear of nuclear attack 
as the generation before them.
    I am proud also to salute the courageous leaders with nuclear 
responsibilities: President Yeltsin, Kravchuk, Nazarbayev, Shushkevich, 
who join me in ending the superpower standoff that risked nuclear 
nightmare. This is the first General Assembly to seat you as truly 
independent and free nations. And to you and the leaders of the other 
independent states, I say: Welcome home; we are now truly United 
Nations.
    With the cold war's end, I believe we have a unique opportunity to 
go beyond artificial divisions of a first, second, and third world to 
forge instead a genuine global community of free and sovereign nations; 
a community built on respect for principle of peaceful settlements of 
disputes, fundamental human rights, and the twin pillars of freedom, 
democracy and free markets.
    Already the United Nations, especially the Security Council, has 
done much to ful-

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fill its original mission and to build this global community. U.N. 
leadership has been critical in resolving conflicts and brokering peace 
the entire world over. But securing democracy and securing the peace in 
the century ahead will be no simple task. Imperial communism may have 
been vanquished, but that does not end the challenges of our age, 
challenges that must be overcome if we are finally to end the divisions 
between East and West, North and South that fuel strife and strain and 
conflict and war.
    As we support the historic growth of democracy around the world, I 
believe the community of nations and the United Nations face three 
critical, interrelated challenges as we enter the 21st century:
    First, we face the political challenge of keeping today's peace and 
preventing tomorrow's wars. As we see daily in Bosnia and Somalia and 
Cambodia, everywhere conflict claims innocent lives. The need for 
enhanced peacekeeping capabilities has never been greater, the conflicts 
we must deal with more intractable, the costs of conflict higher.
    Second, we face the strategic challenge of the proliferation of 
weapons of mass destruction, truly the fastest growing security 
challenge to international peace and order.
    And third, we face the common economic challenge of promoting 
prosperity for all, of strengthening an open, growth-oriented free 
market international economic order while safeguarding the environment.
    Meeting these challenges will require us to strengthen our 
collective engagement. It will require us to transform our collective 
institutions. And above all, it will require that each of us look 
seriously at our own governments and how we conduct our international 
affairs. We too must change our institutions and our practices if we are 
to make a new world of the promise of today, if we're to secure a 21st 
century peace.
    With you today, I would like to discuss these three challenges: 
peacekeeping, proliferation, and prosperity. And I'd like to use this 
opportunity to begin to sketch how I believe the international community 
can work together to meet these three challenges and how the United 
States is changing its institutions and policies to catalyze this 
effort.
    Let me begin with peacekeeping. The United Nations has a long and 
distinguished history of peacekeeping and humanitarian relief. From 
Cyprus and Lebanon to Cambodia and Croatia, the blue beret has become a 
symbol of hope amid all that hostility, and the U.N. has long played a 
central role in preventing conflicts from turning into wars. 
Strengthened peacekeeping capabilities can help buttress these 
diplomatic efforts.
    But as much as the United Nations has done, it can do much more. 
Peacekeepers are stretched to the limit while demands for their services 
increase by the day. The need for monitoring and preventive 
peacekeeping, putting people on the ground before the fighting starts, 
may become especially critical in volatile regions. This is especially 
the case because of the rapid and turbulent change that continues to 
shake Eastern Europe and Eurasia.
    Across the lands that once were imprisoned behind an Iron Curtain, 
peoples are reasserting their historical identities that were frozen in 
communism's catacomb. Where this is taking place in a democratic manner 
with tolerance and civility and respect for fundamental human rights and 
freedoms, this new democratic nationalism is all to the good. But 
unfortunately, we need only look to the bloody battles raging in places 
such as the former Yugoslavia to see the dangers of ethnic violence. 
This is the greatest threat to the democratic peace we hope to build 
with Eastern Europe, with Russia and Eurasia, even more so than economic 
deprivation.
    We fully support the efforts of NATO and CSCE and WEU, the C.I.S. 
and other competent regional organizations to develop peacekeeping 
capabilities. We are convinced that enhanced U.N. capabilities, however, 
are a necessary complement to these regional efforts, not just in Europe 
and Eurasia but across the globe.
    I welcome the Secretary-General's call for a new agenda to 
strengthen the United Nations' ability to prevent, contain, and resolve 
conflict across the globe. And today, I call upon all members to join me 
in taking

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bold steps to advance that agenda. I, therefore, will be discussing with 
my colleagues the merits of a special meeting of the U.N. Security 
Council to discuss the Secretary-General's proposals and to develop 
concrete responses in five key areas:
    One, robust peacekeeping requires men and equipment that only member 
states can provide. Nations should develop and train military units for 
possible peacekeeping operations and humanitarian relief. And these 
forces must be available on short notice at the request of the Security 
Council and with the approval, of course, of the governments providing 
them.
    Two, if multinational units are to work together, they must train 
together. Many nations, for example, Fiji, Norway, Canada, and Finland, 
have a long history of peacekeeping. And we can all tap into that 
experience as we train for expanded operations. Effective multinational 
action will also require coordinated command-and-control and 
interoperability of both equipment and communications. Multinational 
planning, training, field exercises will be needed. These efforts should 
link up with regional organizations.
    Three, we also need to provide adequate logistical support for 
peacekeeping and humanitarian operations. Member states should designate 
stockpiles of resources necessary to meet humanitarian emergencies 
including famines, floods, civil disturbances. This will save valuable 
time in a crisis.
    Four, we will need to develop planning, crisis management, and 
intelligence capabilities for peacekeeping and humanitarian operations.
    And five, we must ensure adequate, equitable financing for U.N. and 
associated peacekeeping efforts.
    As I said, we must change our national institutions if we are to 
change our international relations. So let me assure you: The United 
States is ready to do its part to strengthen world peace by 
strengthening international peacekeeping.
    For decades, the American military has served as a stabilizing 
presence around the globe. I want to draw on our extensive experience in 
winning wars and keeping the peace to support U.N. peacekeeping. I have 
directed the United States Secretary of Defense to place a new emphasis 
on peacekeeping. Because of peacekeeping's growing importance as a 
mission for the United States military, we will emphasize training of 
combat, engineering, and logistical units for the full range of 
peacekeeping and humanitarian activities.
    We will work with the United Nations to best employ our considerable 
lift, logistics, communications, and intelligence capabilities to 
support peacekeeping operations. We will offer our capabilities for 
joint simulations and peacekeeping exercises to strengthen our ability 
to undertake joint peacekeeping operations. There is room for all 
countries, large and small, and I hope all will play a part.
    Member states, as always, must retain the final decision on the use 
of their troops, of course. But we must develop our ability to 
coordinate peacekeeping efforts so that we can mobilize quickly when a 
threat to peace arises or when people in need look to the world for 
help.
    I have further directed the establishment of a permanent 
peacekeeping curriculum in U.S. military schools. Training plainly is 
key. The United States is prepared to make available our bases and 
facilities for multinational training and field exercises. One such base 
nearby with facilities is Fort Dix. America used these bases to win the 
cold war, and today, with that war over, they can help build a lasting 
peace.
    The United States is willing to provide our military expertise to 
the United Nations to help the U.N. strengthen its planning and 
operations for peacekeeping. We will also broaden American support for 
monitoring, verification, reconnaissance, and other requirements of U.N. 
peacekeeping or humanitarian assistance operations.
    And finally, the United States will review how we fund peacekeeping 
and explore new ways to ensure adequate American financial support for 
U.N. peacekeeping and U.N. humanitarian activities. I do believe that we 
must think differently about how we ensure and pay for our security in 
this new era.
    While the end of the cold war may have ended, the superpower nuclear 
arms competition, regional competition, weapons of

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mass destruction continue. Over 20 countries have or are developing 
nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons and the means to deliver them. 
At a time when the United States and its former adversaries are engaged 
in deep historic cuts in our nuclear arsenals, our children and 
grandchildren will never forgive us if we allow new and unstable nuclear 
standoffs to develop around the world.
    We believe the Security Council should become a key forum for 
nonproliferation enforcement. The Security Council should make clear its 
intention to stem proliferation and sanction proliferators. Reaffirming 
assurances made at the time the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was 
negotiated, I proposed that the Security Council reassure the non-
nuclear states that it will seek immediate action to provide assistance 
in accordance with the charter to any non-nuclear weapons state party to 
the NPT that is a victim of an act of aggression or an object of threat 
of aggression involving nuclear weapons.
    I also call for the indefinite renewal of the Nuclear Non-
Proliferation Treaty when it is reviewed in 1995. I believe we must 
explore ways that we can strengthen linkages between these suppliers' 
clubs, the Nuclear Suppliers Group, Australia Group, and the Missile 
Technology Control Regime, and specialized U.N. agencies. Here, I would 
like to note UNSCOM's productive efforts to dismantle the Iraqi weapons 
of mass destruction program and the International Atomic Energy Agency's 
continuing good work.
    But as the U.N. organizations adapt to stop proliferation, so, too, 
must every member state change its structures to advance our 
nonproliferation goals. In that spirit, I want to announce my intention 
today to work with the United States Congress to redirect the United 
States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, known to some of you as 
ACDA, to refocus its talents on providing technical support for 
nonproliferation, weapons monitoring and destruction, and global defense 
conversion. Under the direction of the Secretary of State, ACDA should 
be used not only in completing the traditional arms control agenda, but, 
just as importantly, in providing technical assistance on our new 
security agenda.
    Even as we work to prevent proliferation of weapons of mass 
destruction, we must be realistic and guard ourselves against 
proliferation that has already taken place. Therefore, we're working 
toward a cooperative system for defense against limited ballistic 
missile attacks. And we fully intend to have other nations participate 
in this global protection system.
    While expanded peacekeeping capabilities and improved 
nonproliferation efforts will be critical for building an enduring 
peace, shared economic growth is the long-term foundation for a brighter 
future well into the next century. That's why I stated yesterday, during 
a moment of international uncertainty, that the United States would be 
strongly engaged with its global partners in building a global economic, 
financial, and trading structure for this new era. At the same time I 
urge that our global responsibilities lead us to examine ways to 
strengthen the G-7 coordination process. I affirmed America's support 
for European integration that opens markets and enhances Europe's 
capability to be our partner in the great challenges that we face in 
this new era.
    While the exact form of integration is, of course, for Europeans to 
determine, we will stand by them. Economic growth is not a zero-sum 
process. All of us will benefit from the expanded trade and investment 
that comes from a vibrant, growing world economy.
    To ensure that the benefits of this growth are sustained and shared 
by all, fair and open competition should be the fuel for the global 
economic engine. That's why the United States wants to complete the 
Uruguay round of the GATT negotiations as soon as possible and to create 
a network of free trade agreements beginning with the North American 
free trade agreement. At the same time we need to recognize that we have 
a shared responsibility to foster and support the free market reforms 
necessary to build growing economies and vibrant democracies in the 
developing world and in the new democratic states. This should be done 
by promoting the private sector to build these new economies, not by

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fostering dependency with traditional government-to-government foreign 
aid.
    Since World War II, foreign assistance often served as a weapon in 
the cold war. Obviously, we will still use critical foreign assistance 
funds to meet legitimate security needs. As our humanitarian operations 
in Somalia and northern Iraq, Bosnia, and the former Soviet Union will 
testify, we will continue our robust humanitarian assistance efforts to 
help those suffering from manmade and natural disasters.
    But foreign aid as we've known it needs to be transformed. The 
notion of the handout to less developed countries needs to give way to 
cooperation in mutually productive economic relationships. We know that 
the more a nation relies on the private sector and free markets, the 
higher its rate of growth; the more open to trade, the higher its rate 
of growth; and the better a country's investment climate, the higher its 
rate of growth.
    To move from aid, what I would call aid dependency, to economic 
partnership, we propose to alter fundamentally the focus of U.S. 
assistance programs to building strong, independent economies that can 
become contributors to a healthy, growing global economy. Now, that 
means that our new emphasis should be on building economic partnerships 
among our private sectors that will promote prosperity at home and 
abroad also.
    Working with our Congress, I will propose a top-to-bottom overhaul 
of our institutions that plan and administer foreign assistance, 
drastically reducing the bureaucracy that has built up around 
Government-based programs; streamlining our delivery systems; and 
strengthening support for private sector development and economic 
reform. The Agency for International Development, AID, another 
institution born during the cold war, needs to be fundamentally and 
radically overhauled. Promoting economic security, opportunity, and 
competitiveness will become a primary mission of the State Department.
    Our assistance efforts should not be charity. On the contrary, they 
should promote mutual prosperity. Therefore, using existing foreign 
affairs resources, I will propose creating a $1 billion growth fund. The 
fund will provide grants and credits to support U.S. businesses in 
providing expertise, goods, and services desperately needed in countries 
undertaking economic restructuring.
    I will also support significantly increasing the programs of the 
Export-Import Bank to ensure that U.S. products and technology promote 
investment in worldwide economic growth. The United States will work 
with its global partners, especially the G-7 nations, to enhance global 
growth at this key point in world history as we end one era and begin 
another. None of us can afford insular policies. Each of us must 
contribute through greater coordinated action to build a stronger world 
economy.
    Ladies and gentlemen, I realize that what I've outlined today is an 
ambitious agenda. But we live in remarkable times, times when empires 
collapse, ideologies dissolve, and walls crumble, times when change can 
come so fast that we sometimes forget how far and how fast we've 
progressed in achieving our hopes for a global community of democratic 
nations.
    In the face of today's changes, with the loss of so much that was 
familiar and predictable, there is now a great temptation for people 
everywhere to turn inward and to build walls around themselves: walls 
against trade, walls against people, walls against ideas and investment, 
walls against anything at all that appears new and different. As the 
Berlin Wall fell, these walls, too, must fall. They must fall because we 
cannot separate our fate from that of others. Our peace is so 
interconnected, our security so intertwined, our prosperity so 
interdependent that to turn inward and retreat from the world is to 
invite disaster and defeat.
    At the threshold of a new century we can truly say a more peaceful, 
more secure, more prospering future beckons to us. And for the sake of 
our children and our grandchildren, and for the sake of those who 
perished during the cold war, and for the sake of every man, woman, and 
child who kept freedom's flame alive even during the darkest noon, let 
us pledge ourselves to make that future real. And let us pledge 
ourselves to fulfill the promise of a truly United Nations.

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    Thank you, and may God bless you all. Thank you very much.

                    Note: The President spoke at 11:02 a.m. in the 
                        General Assembly Hall at the United Nations.