[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1994, Book I)]
[January 9, 1994]
[Pages 8-14]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks to Future Leaders of Europe in Brussels
January 9, 1994

    Thank you very much, Mr. Prime Minister, Mr. Mayor, distinguished 
leaders. I'm delighted to be here with the Prime Minister and with many 
of Europe's future leaders in this great hall of history.
    I first came to Brussels as a young man in a very different but a 
difficult time, when the future for us was uncertain. It is fitting that 
my first trip to Europe as President be about building a better future 
for the young people of Europe and the United States today and that it 
begin here in Belgium. As a great capital and as the headquarters of 
NATO and the European Union, Brussels and Belgium have long been at the 
center of Europe's steady progress toward greater security and greater 
prosperity. For those of you who know anything about me personally, I 
also have a great personal debt of nearly 40 years standing to this 
country because it was a Belgian, Adolphe Sax, who invented the 
saxophone. [Laughter]
    I have come here at this time because I believe that it is time for 
us together to revitalize our partnership and to define a new security 
at a time of historic change. It is a new day for our transatlantic 
partnership: The cold war is over. Germany is united. The Soviet Union 
is gone, and a constitutional democracy governs Russia. The specter that 
haunted our citizens for decades, of tanks rolling in through Fulda Gap 
or nuclear annihilation raining from the sky, that specter, thank God, 
has largely vanished. Your generation is the beneficiary of those 
miraculous transformations.
    In the end, the Iron Curtain rusted from within and was brought 
crashing down by the determination of brave men and women to live free, 
by the Poles and the Czechs, by the Russians, the Ukrainians, the people 
of the Baltics, by all those who understood that neither economics nor 
consciences can be ordered from above. Equally important, however, their 
heroic efforts succeeded because our resolve never failed, because the 
weapons of deterrence never disappeared and the message of democracy 
never disappeared.
    As the East enjoys a new birth of freedom, one of freedom's great 
victories lives here in Europe's West: the peaceful cleaving together of 
nations which clashed for centuries. The transformation was wrought by 
visionary leaders such as Monnet, Schumann, Spaak, and Mar-


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shall, who understood that modern nations can enrich their futures more 
through cooperation than conquest. My administration supports European 
union and Europe's development of stronger institutions of common 
purpose and common action. We recognize we will benefit more from a 
strong and equal partner than from a weak one.
    The fall of the Soviet empire and Western Europe's integration are 
the two greatest advances for peace in the last half of the 20th 
century. All of us are reaping their blessings. In particular, with the 
cold war over and in spite of the present global recession which clouds 
your future, all our nations now have the opportunity to take long, 
deferred steps toward economic and social renewal. My own Nation has 
made a beginning in putting our economic house in order, reducing our 
deficits, investing in our people, creating jobs, and sparking an 
economic recovery that we hope will help not only the United States but 
also will lift all nations. We're also facing up to some of the social 
problems in our country we have ignored for too long, from the challenge 
to provide universal health care to reducing crime in our streets to 
dealing with the needs of our poor children. We have a truly 
multicultural society. In one of our counties there are people from over 
150 different national and ethnic groups. But we are working to build an 
American community for the 21st century.
    And with the European Union, we have recently led the world to a new 
GATT agreement that will create millions of new jobs in all our 
countries. In many ways, it would be easy to offer you only a message of 
simple celebration, to trumpet our common heritage, to rejoice that our 
labors for peace have been rewarded, to cheer on the economic progress 
that is occurring. But this is not a time for self-congratulation. And 
certainly we have enough challenges that we should act as true partners. 
That is, we should share one another's burdens rather than only talking 
of triumphs. And we should speak honestly about what we feel about where 
we are and where we should go.
    This is the truth as I see it. We served history well during the 
cold war, but now history calls on us again to help consolidate 
freedom's new gains into a larger and a more lasting peace. We must 
build a new security for Europe. The old security was based on the 
defense of our bloc against another bloc. The new security must be found 
in Europe's integration, an integration of security forces, of market 
economies, of national democracies. The purpose of my trip to Europe is 
to help lead the movement to that integration and to assure you that 
America will be a strong partner in it.
    For the peoples who broke communism's chains, we now see a race 
between rejuvenation and despair. And the outcome will--bound to shape 
the security of every nation in the transatlantic alliance. Today that 
race is being played out from the Balkans to central Asia. In one lane 
are the heirs of the enlightenment who seek to consolidate freedom's 
gains by building free economies, open democracies, and tolerant civic 
cultures. Pitted against them are the grim pretenders to tyranny's dark 
throne, the militant nationalists and demagogues who fan suspicions that 
are ancient and parade the pain of renewal in order to obscure the 
promise of reform.
    We, none of us, can afford to be bystanders of that race. Too much 
is at stake. Consider this: The coming months and years may decide 
whether the Russian people continue to develop a peaceful market 
democracy or whether, in frustration, they elect leaders who incline 
back toward authoritarianism and empire. This period may determine 
whether the nations neighboring Russia thrive in freedom and join the 
ranks of nonnuclear states or founder under the strain of reform and 
cling to weapons that increase the risk of nuclear accident or 
diversion. This period may decide whether the states of the former 
Soviet bloc are woven into the fabric of transatlantic prosperity and 
security or are simply left hanging in isolation as they face the same 
daunting changes gripping so many others in Europe.
    These pivotal decisions ultimately rest with the people who threw 
off communism's yoke. They must make their own decisions about their own 
future. But we in the West can clearly help to shape their choices, and 
we must summon the political will to do so.
    The task requires a steady and patient effort, guided by a strategic 
star that points us toward the integration of a broader Europe. It also 
requires a fair amount of humility, understanding that we cannot control 
every event in every country on every day. But if we are willing to 
assume the central challenge, we can revitalize not only the nations of 
the East but also our own transatlantic relationship.

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    Over the past half-century, the transatlantic community only 
realized half the promise of World War II's triumph over fascism. The 
other half lay captive behind Europe's walls of division. Now we have 
the chance to realize the full promise of Europe's victories without its 
great disappointment: Normandy without Yalta, the liberation of the Low 
Countries without the Berlin blockade.
    During this past half-century, transatlantic security depended 
primarily on the deterrents provided by our military forces. Now the 
immediate threat to our East is not of advancing armies but of creeping 
instability. Countering that threat requires not only military security 
but also the promotion of democratic and economic renewal. Combined, 
these forces are the strongest bulwark against Europe's current dangers, 
against ethnic conflict, the abuse of human rights, the destabilizing 
refugee flows, the rise of aggressive regimes, and the spread of weapons 
of mass destruction.
    The integration of the former Communist bloc with the rest of Europe 
will be gradual and often difficult, as Germany's bold efforts 
demonstrate. And like all great opportunities, we must remember that 
this one could be fleeting. We must not now let the Iron Curtain be 
replaced with a veil of indifference. For history will judge us as it 
judged with scorn those who preached isolationism between the World Wars 
and as it has judged with praise the bold architects of the 
transatlantic community after World War II.
    With the cold war over, some in America with short memories have 
called for us to pack up and go home. I am asked often, ``Why do you 
maintain a presence in Europe? How can you justify the expense when we 
have so many problems here at home?'' We tried that, right after World 
War I. The American people this year proved their resistance to the 
siren song of global withdrawal. We did so when the Congress voted for 
the North American Free Trade Agreement, voted for America to compete in 
a global economy, not to retreat. And we did so when we reached out to 
Europe and to others and, in working with the European Union, led the 
world to accept a new GATT agreement on world trade. I have come here 
today to declare and to demonstrate that Europe remains central to the 
interests of the United States and that we will help to work with our 
partners in seizing the opportunities before us all.
    Without question, Europe is not the only focus of our engagement. We 
must reach out to Latin America and to Asia, areas that are increasingly 
important both to the United States and to Europe. And our bonds with 
Europe will be different than they were in the past, but make no mistake 
about it, the bonds that tie the United States and Europe are unique. We 
share a passionate faith that God has endowed us as individuals with 
inalienable rights and a belief that the state exists by our consent 
solely to advance freedom and security and prosperity for all of us as 
individuals. That is still a radical idea in the world in which we live. 
Developed by Locke and Montesquieu, put into practice in my country by 
Jefferson and Madison, it has toppled tyrants, it has drawn millions to 
our country's shores. Over three centuries, the ties of kinship between 
the United States and Europe have fostered bonds of commerce, and you 
remain our most valued partner, not just in the cause of democracy and 
freedom but also in the economics of trade and investment.
    But above all, the core of our security remains with Europe. That is 
why America's commitment to Europe's safety and stability remains as 
strong as ever. That is why I urged NATO to convene this week's summit. 
It is why I am committed to keeping roughly 100,000 American troops 
stationed in Europe, consistent with the expressed desires of our allies 
here. It is not habit but security and partnership that justifies this 
continuing commitment by the United States. Just as we have worked in 
partnership with Europe on every major security challenge in this 
century, it is now time for us to join in building the new security for 
the 21st century, the century in which most of you in this room will 
live most of your lives. The new security must seek to bind a broader 
Europe together with a strong fabric woven of military cooperation, 
prosperous market economies, and vital democracies.
    Let me speak briefly about each of these. The first and most 
important element of the security must be military strength and 
cooperation. The cold war is over, but war itself is not over. As we 
know, it rages today not only in distant lands but right here in Europe 
and the former Yugoslavia. That murderous conflict reminds us that even 
after the cold war, military forces remain relevant. It also reveals the 
difficulties of applying military force to conflicts

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within as well as among states. And it teaches us that it is best to act 
early to prevent conflicts that we may later not be able to control.
    As we work to resolve that tragedy and ease the suffering of its 
victims, we also need to change our security institutions so they can 
better address such conflicts and advance Europe's integration. Many 
institutions will play a role, including the European Union, the Western 
European Union, the Council of Europe, the Conference for Security and 
Cooperation in Europe, and the United Nations. But NATO, history's 
greatest military alliance, must be central to that process.
    Only NATO has the military forces, the integrated command, the broad 
legitimacy, and the habits of cooperation that are essential to draw in 
new participants and respond to new challenges. One of the deepest 
transformations within the transatlantic community over the past half-
century occurred because the armed forces of our respected nations 
trained, studied, and marched through their careers together. It is not 
only the compatibility of our weapons but the camaraderie of our 
warriors that provide the sinews behind our mutual security guarantees 
and our best hope for peace.
    Two years ago, our nations began to adapt NATO to this new era by 
creating the North Atlantic Cooperation Council. It includes all the 
states of the former Soviet bloc as well as the 16 of NATO. Now it is 
time to move beyond that dialog and create an operating partnership. 
That is why I have proposed that we create the Partnership For Peace.
    This Partnership will advance a process of evolution for NATO's 
formal enlargement. It looks to the day when NATO will take on new 
members who assume the alliance's full responsibilities. It will create 
a framework in which former Communist states and others not now members 
of NATO can participate with NATO members in joint military planning, 
training, exercises, and other efforts. This partnership will build new 
bonds of cooperation among the militaries of the East and the West. It 
will reinforce the development of democracies and democratic practices, 
such as respect for human rights and civilian control over military 
forces. It can give NATO new tools for responding to ethnic instability 
and other dangers of our era. The use of NATO forces in such missions 
will always be considered, and must be, on a case-by-case basis. But 
tomorrow's summit will put us in a stronger position to make those 
decisions and to make them early and wisely.
    The Partnership For Peace will not alter NATO's fundamental mission 
of defending NATO territory from attack. We cannot afford to abandon 
that mission while the dream of empire still burns in the minds of some 
who look longingly toward a brutal past. But neither can we afford to 
draw a new line between East and West that could create a self-
fulfilling prophecy of future confrontation.
    This partnership opens the door to cooperation with all of NATO's 
former adversaries, including Russia, Ukraine, and the other newly 
independent states, based on a belief that freedom's boundaries must now 
be defined by new behavior, not old history.
    I say to all those in Europe and the United States who would simply 
have us draw a new line in Europe further east that we should not 
foreclose the possibility of the best possible future for Europe, which 
is a democracy everywhere, a market economy everywhere, people 
cooperating everywhere for mutual security. We can guard against a 
lesser future, but we should strive for the best future for you and your 
generation.
    NATO can also help to meet Europe's new security challenges by doing 
more to counter the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. I tell 
you, frankly, it is one of our most difficult and challenging tasks. 
Countering those weapons and the missiles that deliver them will require 
close cooperation, honesty, and discipline, and a willingness of some 
not now willing to do it to forgo immediate financial gain.
    The danger is clear and present. Growing missile capabilities are 
bringing more of Europe into the range of rogue states such as Iran and 
Libya. There are disturbing reports of efforts to smuggle nuclear 
materials into and out of Eastern Europe. And this eastward-looking 
summit will give us the chance to begin to address the threat on our own 
territory.
    The second element of the new security we are building must be 
greater economic vitality, the issue which I would imagine is of most 
immediate concern to most of you. We must build it on vibrant and open 
market economies, the engines that have given us the greatest prosperity 
in human history over the last several decades in Europe and in the 
United States.
    Our combined success in leading the world to a new GATT agreement 
capped 7 years of

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effort to expand prosperity to all trading nations. Now we must define a 
successor agenda to GATT that focuses on the renewal of advanced 
economies and the enlargement of prosperities to the nations of our East 
that are making the difficult transitions to market economics.
    First, the renewal of our own economies is critical. Unless we are 
creating jobs and unless we are raising incomes in Europe and in the 
United States and Japan, in the advanced countries of the world, it will 
be difficult for the people of those nations, all our nations, to 
continue to support of policy of involvement with the rest of the world.
    The nations of the European Union face particular severe economic 
challenges with nearly 20 million people unemployed and, in Germany's 
case, the extraordinarily high costs of unification. All our nations 
have had to struggle against the restless forces of this new global 
economy, against the competition that comes from countries with lower 
wages or that is generated when technology enables us to do more with 
fewer workers but there is not new technology to provide new jobs for 
those who are displaced. This is a problem not just for Europe but also 
for the United States and now for Japan as well.
    Among the Atlantic nations, economic stagnation has clearly eroded 
public support and finances for outward-looking foreign policies and for 
greater integration. Our respective efforts to revive our own economies 
are therefore important not only for our own living standards but also 
for our collective strength. And both of them will shape the future you 
and your children will have.
    We must proceed quickly to implement the GATT agreement. But we also 
must learn together and from each other on making a broader and bolder 
series of adjustments to this new global economy.
    We Americans have a lot to learn from Europe in matters of job 
training and apprenticeship, of moving our people from school to work, 
into good paying jobs with the capacity to continue to learn new skills 
as the economy forces them to do so. But we also may have something to 
teach in the area of the flexibility of our job structure and our 
capacity to generate work and new employment opportunities. This is an 
area in which we can usefully draw lessons from each other. And that is 
why I am pleased that in March our leading ministers will hold a jobs 
conference that I proposed last July. We simply must figure out how to 
create more jobs and how to reward people who work both harder and 
smarter in the workplace. It is the basis of all the other attitudes 
that we want to foster to remain engaged with one another and with the 
rest of the world.
    But as we work to strengthen our own economies, we must know that we 
serve our own prosperity and our security by helping the new market 
economies of Europe's eastern half to thrive. Successful market reforms 
in those states will help to deflate the region's demagogs. It will help 
to ease ethnic tensions. It will help new democracies to take root. It 
is also in your long-term interest because one of the things that we 
have learned is that wealthy nations cannot grow richer unless they have 
customers beyond their borders for their goods and their services. So 
the short-term difficulties of taking Eastern Europe into our economic 
alliance will be more than rewarded if they succeed and if they are 
customers for Western Europe's goods and services tomorrow. That is why 
early on in our administration we committed to increase support 
substantially for market reforms in the new states of the former Soviet 
Union and why we have continued our support for economic transition in 
Central and Eastern Europe.
    Ultimately, the success of market reforms to the East will depend 
more on trade than aid. None of us have enough money to markedly change 
the future of those countries as they move to free market systems in the 
government coffers. We cannot give them enough aid to make them full 
partners. They must grow and trade their way into full partnership with 
us.
    One of our priorities, therefore, should be to reduce trade barriers 
to the former Communist states. It will make little sense for us to 
applaud their market reforms on the one hand while offering only 
selective access to our markets on the other. That's like inviting 
someone to a castle and refusing to let down the drawbridge. The United 
States has already eliminated many of our cold war barriers to products 
from these countries. And all our nations must find more ways to do the 
same thing. The economic success of these states simply cannot be 
separated from our own renewal and security.
    In 1931, a remarkable British political cartoon portrayed the United 
States and Europe in a rowboat. At the back end of the boat, where 
Europe's more Eastern powers sat, there was

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a terrible leak, and it was sinking fast. The front end, where the 
United States and Western Europe were, was still afloat. The boat was 
sinking from the back end. And one of the figures in our end of the boat 
was saying, ``Thank goodness, the leak's not at our end of the boat.'' 
In the end, the whole boat sank. That will happen again unless we work 
together. Europe's Western half clearly, as history shows, cannot long 
be secure if the Eastern half remains in turmoil.
    The third and final imperative of this new security is to support 
the growth of democracy and individual freedoms that has begun 
throughout Europe's former Communist states. The success of these 
democratic reforms make us all more secure because democracies tend not 
to wage war on one another and they tend not to break their word to one 
another. Democratic governments nurture civil society, respect for human 
rights, and habits of simple tolerance. The democratic values at the 
heart of the Western community are also our best answer to the 
aggressive nationalism and ethnic hatreds unleashed by the end of the 
cold war.
    We in the transatlantic community must commit ourselves to helping 
democracy succeed in all the former Communist states that are Western 
Europe's immediate neighbors, because their security matters to our 
security. Nowhere is democracy's success more important to us all than 
there, and then in Russia. I will say again: In Russia, if the nation 
continues to evolve as a market democracy, satisfied within her borders 
and at peace with her neighbors, defining her greatness in terms of the 
ability to enable all of the children of Russia to live to the fullest 
of their potential, then our road toward Europe's full integration will 
be wider and smoother and safer. As one Ukrainian legislator recently 
stated, ``If Russia is democratic, Europe will be calm.''
    The results of the recent elections in Russia and the statements of 
some Russian political figures have given us all genuine cause for 
concern. We must consistently condemn expression of intolerance and 
threats of aggression. But we should also keep those concerns in some 
historical perspective. It was only 2 years ago, after all, that the 
Soviet Union dissolved. Just 2 months ago, Russia appeared to be on the 
brink of a civil war. But since then Russia has held a free and fair 
national election, its people have ratified a genuinely democratic 
constitution, and they have elected their first-ever post-Soviet 
legislature. And the government continues to pursue democratic and 
economic reform.
    The transformation Russia is undertaking is absolutely staggering. 
If you just think about what the country has been like since 1917, if 
you go back to the 18th century and imagine the history of the nation 
from that point to this, the idea that the nation could seriously be 
involved by democratic vote in undertaking these transformations is 
absolutely staggering. We cannot expect them to correct overnight three-
quarters of a century of repressive leadership, three-quarters of a 
century of totalitarian policy, or a whole national history in which 
there was no democracy.
    As in the other Communist nations, this will be the work of 
generations. We in the United States have been at it for 200 years now, 
and we're still working to try to get it right. All of us have to 
recognize that there will be wrong turns and even reversals, as there 
have been in all of our own countries throughout our histories. But as 
long as these states continue their progress toward democracy and 
respect the rights of their own and other people, they understand the 
rights of their minorities and their neighbors, then we should support 
their progress with a steady patience.
    In order to support these new democracies, we are supporting 
grassroots efforts to build the institutions of civil society, from 
community organizers in the Czech Republic to election volunteers in 
Bulgaria. We also will take steps to encourage cooperation among the new 
democracies. As with Western Europe after World War II, we must get 
regional neighbors working together rather than looking at each other 
with suspicion.
    The broader integration in peace we are building is not only a 
European concern, I say again, it is distinctly in the interests of the 
United States. My Nation has thrilled at the progress of freedom on this 
continent over the past 5 years. And we understand well the toll that 
European discord ultimately takes on our own people.
    Only a few hours from this place lie the graves of thousands of 
Americans who died in Europe's two great wars. History records where 
they fell, at Flanders Field, on the shores of Normandy, and in the 
Battle of the Bulge. But let us remember as well why they came here, why 
they left the safety of their homes to fight in a distant land. They 
came because our secu-


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rity depends more on things that go far beyond geographical divides. Our 
security depends on more than the ocean that divides us. It depends on 
the existence of a strong and free and democratic Europe.
    Today we can honor the sacrifice of those Americans buried here on 
your soil by expanding the reach of the freedoms they fought and gave 
their lives to preserve. The fight for your generation across a broader 
Europe will be joined and won not on this continent's beaches or across 
its plains but rather in its new parliaments and city councils, in the 
offices and factories of its new market economies, in the hearts and 
minds of the young people like many of you here. You have the most to 
gain from a Europe that is integrated in terms of security, in terms of 
economics, in terms of democracies.
    Ultimately, you will have to decide what sort of Europe you want and 
how hard you are willing to work for it. But I want you to know that the 
United States stands by you in that battle, as we have in the other 
battles of the 20th century.
    I believe that our freedom is indivisible. I believe our destinies 
are joined. I believe that the 21st century can be the most exciting 
period that Europe and the United States have ever known and that your 
future can be the richest and brightest of any generation. But we will 
have to work to make it so.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 6 p.m. in the Gothic Room at the Hotel de 
Ville. In his remarks, he referred to Prime Minister Jean-Luc Dehaene of 
Belgium and Mayor Jose Desmaret of Brussels.